A few weeks ago I got a note from a soon-to-be college graduate who was looking for advice about entering the international development sector. Thank you to the people who wrote back to “Bill” with advice, as I hope that advice will be useful to many people seeking out this work. If you haven’t read […]
Last week I got this note below from a college senior looking to explore development work, and wondering what the best and most responsible way to do that would be. I wrote him back some thoughts, and asked him if it would be ok if I shared this with LessonsILearned readers to see what advice […]
At PEPY Tours, we transformed our organization from a “voluntourism” company, offering people the chance to “help” while they traveled, to a “learning service” company, where we invite people to come learn about the issues surrounding international development, and then they will be better equipped to do the “serving” later. The biggest lessons we came to […]
Last week I was part of a team of bloggers at the Skoll World Forum and, in addition to the opening plenary piece, I was able to document a few more sessions. Empathy: On the last day of the forum, I attended a session on Empathy by Bill Drayton of Ashoka and Mary Gordon of […]
I am at the Skoll World Forum this week and each of us are assigned to blog certain sessions. I thought blogging would be easy, having already done quite a bit of it, but getting a post out within an hour of the sessions is hard (and for this first attempt, I failed!). Anyway, here […]
Both “participatory development” and “design thinking” theories advocate for project planning to start with the needs of the end-user. It’s interesting to me that both concepts illustrate pretty much the same intuitive process, yet the naming of both makes them seem less broadly applicable. I guess maybe that’s because “Successful impact-for-the-end-user-focused-planning” is a much less […]
Steve Jobs reminding us to be “unreasonable”. “Here’s to the crazy ones.. the round pegs in the square holes… they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, […]