mink

Governments cannot possibly deal with all street-level issues that arise on a daily basis. So they appoint representatives, such as local authorities, to deal with or channel such issues so they get attended to. This presents a paradox. How can an institution interested in national, long-term, wide-reaching policy work with an institution that is interested in street-level, shorter-term policy? A few variables are at play, such as: (1) The number of people who you consider constituents; (2) The level of resources required during implementation; (3) The amount of time it would take for implementation; and (4) The number of changes possible in a given timeframe. I'm sure this paradox is a daily consideration for those policymakers who mediate between the national government and local government authorities. But a presentation this morning at Twaweza on declining access to water amidst rising population (thanks Ruth!) got me thinking twice about this set up. Perhaps what ...

It could just be me and the field I have been involved in for some time now. But I observe many people have a career tagline that usually ends with something like "... improving people's lives".  It seems that, to make a statement like "my work improves people's lives", you need to actually have three things locked down: 1. Grounded understanding of the people you are talking about, including their language, history, religious values, other cultural values, ways of dressing, ways of walking, etc. 2. Experience in seeing what does not actually lead to improvement, including many failed programs with well-defined and clear indicators signifying failure. 3. Proven successes in the business of life-improvement, including many successful programs. Now, do people who openly say that they are in the business of improving peoples' lives really have these three on a lock down? It seems impossible to me to get 1 straight. I still feel like ...

One of my good friends from Lafayette, who is currently travelling the world supporting international study programs, sent me Thabo Mbeki's " I am African " speech. My favorite part of this speech comes near the end: Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.    But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after! What does he mean when he says "together with the best of the world, we are too prone to pettiness..."? Does he mean to say that all humans are fallible, regardless of who they are? Or does he mean that we have conditioned ourselves to think temporarily, when in fact, we are built to think of eternity? Whichever it is, I thin...