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Picture of the Day: Green versus Desert
2009-09-22 08:33:00
China is creating a 4,500 km (2,800 mi) long forest belt to control sandstorms pushing forward the sands of the Gobi desert. (More)More Picture s of the Day on The Road.Picture courtesy Biopact
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Copenhagen Climate Summit Heat: from business to condoms.
2009-09-21 12:50:00
The more the December Copenhagen Climate Change Summit comes closer, it is interesting just watching the headlines flashing by. It seems everyone and his dog is starting to claim their stake, and to put their own spin onto climate change trying to ensure they "profit" from whatever comes out. Financially, politically or visibility wise.If you do "Copenhagen summit, climate change", "business, climate change" or "climate engineering" searches on Humanitarian News, you will see the blogosphere and news heating up:Politics were first:US and Europe clash over Copenhagen dealIndia will be key player at Copenhagen conferenceMaldives too broke to attend climate summitChinese adviser: 2C target unrealisticUS climate change bill faces fresh delaysIf Obama Can't Defeat the Republican Headbangers, Our Planet is DoomedE.U. calls on U.S. to do more to tackle climate changeEmissions per person in parts of China above rich nationsMerkel and Sarkozy want carbon tax on importsThe business hook:Clim...
More About: Business , Heat , Condoms

Song of the day: Run Away (The Corrs)
2009-09-20 11:03:00
Say it's true, there's nothing like me and youNot alone, tell me you feel it tooAnd I would runawayI would runaway, yeahI would runawayI would runaway with youCause I have fallen in loveWith you, no never haveI'm never gonna stop falling in love, with youClose the door, lay down upon the floorAnd by candlelight, make love to me through the nightCause I have runawayI have runaway, yeahIf you are in for a magical life version of this song, try this.More music on The Road.
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Kicking people until they have a conscience
2009-09-19 14:16:00
When I was seventeen, as part of the tests to graduate secondary school, we had to read three books from one author, and make short summary. I choose Louis-Paul ("Lowie") Boon, a Flemish writer, columnist, socialist and anarchist. He was not really educated. He was a house painter. But he was a born artist and story teller.He lived in poverty while he wrote his first book. After 400 pages of it, he discarded the relevance, and hung it from a string on his bathroom wall, so he could save on toilet paper. His wife took the manuscript, read it, took the last page and wrote on it: "Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera". She wrapped everything together in brown paper and sent it off to a publisher. It won the Leo J. Krijn Prize for literature.I did not read three books from Louis-Paul Boon. I got fascinated by him and read all of his books, about 30 or 40 by then. Some of the books had the size of an encyclopedia. And I did not write a summary, I wrote a 100 page thesis. My teachers collectively...
More About: People , Conscience

Climate change: 20% of China is now desert.
2009-09-19 10:54:00
Sean Gallagher is a photojournalist living in China . With the support of Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to highlight the impact of desertification in China.Almost 20% of China's land is now desert, affecting 400 million people. In Western China over one million acres of fertile land turn into desert. Per year. Last year they suffered a peak drought.Climate change, wind and water erosion, industrialization, agriculture, untimely policy changes, you name it.China's desertification is not only a problem for the Chinese. It impacts the world as a whole. I am not talking about what 1,000,000 acres of desert mean to the world's climate, alone: the more fertile land turns into sand, the more China is looking for agriculture land abroad, competing with European biofuel companies and Arab countries trying to secure their food production too. And money buys land in Africa. Easily. Even if this means they need to reduce their own food production.Video courtesy Sean Gallagher. Discover...
More About: Climate Change , Change , Desert

New aidworkers and nonprofit blogs
2009-09-19 00:07:00
I have discovered four new aidworker blogs which are worth a read:Roving Bandit: Lee in South SudanKampuchea Crossings: Nathalie in CambodiaIn Development: Chris in KenyaFrom Here to Finvara: Kelsey in South SudanI added them to my aidworkers blogroll (see the widget in the side column), which I treasure. These are my colleagues from all over the world. You MUST check them out regularly. Their latest posts, you can find in AidBlogs .While I am on my soapbox, have also a look at Woody's blog. He works in DRC, and posts very short posts with pictures that always make me smile.As you have noticed, my nonprofit and development blogs list just grew too big to put in the side column. I moved it to my Delicious list. There are 342 blogs in the list at the moment. I publish a snapshot of their latest posts on The NonProfitBlogs. Check also their posts on Humanitarian News.Picture courtesy Kampuchea Crossings

Climate change: The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes
2009-09-16 18:59:00
With the media heating up for the December Climate Change Summit in Denmark, it is time to for some reflection.Does the name "Severn Cullis-Suzuki" mean anything to you? Severn was 12 when in 1992, she raised money to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. She spoke to the summit members in a speech which became famous. A speech which -sadly enough- could have been given today. It makes one wonder what progress really happened in the past 17 year.Do we actually make progress on protecting our planet for the sake of our children, and their children? In an age where Green Goes Commercial, where corrupt companies like Monsanto and Cargill start dominating our food chain, and chase the food prices up so the poor no longer have access to food. A world where Western companies buy up fertile land in Africa to grow biofuel crops so less land becomes available for food agriculture?Did we make progress, or are we still sliding downhill?Check out the most recent news and blogposts about th...
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Summer is over. Snif.
2009-09-14 18:26:00
We hardly had a single drop of rain in July and August. Two weeks ago, it was that hot, I had to buy a fan.A week ago, almost at the flip of a switch, the weather turned around. Thunder, lightning, rain... I had to close the windows at night.And according to the weather forecast, it looks like the summer is over. In the next 10 days, we will have one day of sunshine.Time to go for a winter sleep.. See you all in 8 months. Bye!! ;-)
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Advocacy, the other way: "Why Congo Matters"
2009-09-13 17:52:00
The discussion around MSF UK's controversial video sparked quite a lot of comments around the topic 'How do you portray aid and poverty' or 'How do you make people think about these subjects'.So I thought it is a good idea to show another way. A way that touched me. Meet Emily Troutman.Emily Troutman is a writer and photographer living in Washington. She just came back after a month travelling around Kivu, in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She made a video collage of her pictures, mounted it with some gripping music and appropriate text. Its simplicity took me in, and contrasted sharply with the MSF video we talked about a few days ago. Have a look for yourself:I contacted Emily, and we had an interesting exchange:Why did you make this video?Emily: It was a rare opportunity to give voice to an issue that at this moment only exists at the fringes of the mainstream media.Was this your first trip to rural Africa?Emily: I also traveled with UNOCHA in the Gulu a...
More About: Advocacy , Matters

The dream of OLPC and the aid bubble
2009-09-12 18:40:00
Fellow aidworker Alanna wrote a provocative post on UNDispatch about the "end of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) dream".OLPC set out a couple of years ago, designing, manufacturing and distributing a simple laptop (or call it a "Netbook") geared towards kids, specifically in developing countries. Their mission was formulated as:To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.From the beginning, the plan was ambitious, innovative,.. and controversial. "Tall trees catch a lot of wind" is surely applicable. The more as it was such an easy target for cheap sarcasm: "How will a laptop feed a hungry chi...
More About: Dream , Bubble , The Dream

The heart is what counts
2009-09-09 21:43:00
In what seems to become an ongoing series about humanitarian advocacy ;-)... Here is another video which spoke to my heart. Compare this piece of (he)art with the MSF video we discussed earlier, and you will see what I mean when I say "you don't have to fake stories to move a public"Added to inspirational video collection.Video courtesy the Strongheart Fellowship Programme
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Sunset this evening
2009-09-09 08:56:00
Miracle Beach at Fregene tonight. No words needed.
More About: Sunset

A false start this morning
2009-09-07 22:04:00
Here I am, waking up tickled by sunlight. I get a shower, water the plants, clean up the place a bit, get into the car, drive up the highway. And then I hear a funny noise in the back...Oops, punctured tyre.. No problem I have done this before... A Smart does not come with a spare tyre, but with a handy electric pump. I park on the emergency lane. 30 ton truck racing 2 inches past you. You "pump it up" and drive off..Oops... puncture too big.... I barely make it to the next gas station. All flat again. No problem.. I have a can of tyre glue filler (how do you call that stuff?), made for just that. Except that there is no tool to get the valve off the tyre. No way to fit the glue tube onto the tyre.Well, this is a gas station, so I ask the pompista. Nope. "No tools." He points at the gas station at other side of the highway: "Ask there". Luckily there is an underpass. Off I go.I explain with the best of my Italian, that there is a problem with my "bomba" and I am looking for a "bombi...
More About: Italy , Start , Morning

What's been keeping me busy
2009-09-07 00:08:00
Nope, I don't mean just the past few days - I spent the weekend home in Belgium. I don't mean the hours spent trying to get Windows XP reinstalled on Lana's laptop. And figuring out which driver was the right one for her wireless card. And preferably did not conflict with the network card. Beh.I don't mean neighter the debugging of the LAN ("Daddy, why does the Internet only work for 5 minutes in one go?") - which was just a reset of the wireless router...No, I mean in the past weeks... What's been keeping me busy (outside of work)..Well. I kicked off several new sites: Humanitarian News is my mega-multi-mucho aggregator, taking in the latest posts from about 600 different sites.. It is my first project made on a non-blog platform.. My first timid tries in "Drupal", a webdevelopment platform (the real dudes call it a "CMS or Content Management System") used by The In-Crowd for Real Websites. The whole site is automated, with half-hourly broadcasts on Twitter: @HumanityNews."Hum...

MSF video: An ad too far?
2009-09-04 00:46:00
The UK branch of MSF - Doctors without Borders - launched a new advertisement campaign in the movie theaters. On their website, they asked for feedback, claiming "It is our attempt to make a deliberate move away from some traditional charity advertising which can tend to focus on images of starving children."The video stirred up quite a bit of noise on the "aid watch dog" blogs: Aid Watch and Aid Thoughts. Also the esteemed Philantrophy gave a pitch (Update: see further below for the other "usual suspects" joining in ;-) ). While the commentary has now been disabled on the MSF website (I wonder why, Mr and Mrs MSF, as you "would really appreciate your feedback on the ad." - Update: this is incorrect.. apparently there were never any comments possible on the MSF website.. Confusing.. - see updates below and Marc's comments), the discussion continues on Osocio. The MSF web editor also joined the discussion on DuckRabbit...By coincidence, just a few days ago, I published a post about ...
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Warning! Swine Flu flu prevention leaves white spot on your face
2009-08-31 08:20:00
Picture courtesy of my colleague aidworker Paul, blogging at Head Down, Eyes Open. Even though Paul was much more serious about H1N1 in his post. (Sorry Paul...!)
More About: White , Spot , Prevention , Face , Warning

Picture of the Day: MSF in a message
2009-08-29 14:22:00
I previously posted how a UNICEF ad gave a clear, simple and hard message. This -almost blank- ad for Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without borders beats anything on simplicity.More Picture s of the Day on The RoadPicture courtesy La Cocina Creativa and Agencia McCann-Erickson.
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World Hunger: Disaster in the making (again)...
2009-08-28 12:34:00
Just watching the articles on AidNews flowing by, it looks like hunger in the world is still here, and it is not getting better. The alarm bells are ringing everywhere:Kenya drought worsens hunger riskNumber of Kenyans in need of food aid jumps by over 50%Hunger on the rise in Mexico as recession bitesCameroon ups maize output to avert food crisisUganda faces a food shortage crisisNigeria may face food crisisWater crisis to hit Asian foodIndia to import food amid droughtHunger warning for South Sudan now at pre-famine condition.Drought looming in Syria, 250,000 people at riskMillions in Nepal facing hunger.And that is just in the past days, not including those affected by violence or conflicts.We are in for a rough couple of months to come...Picture courtesy A.Chicheri (WFP)
More About: World , Disaster

Picks of the Week: War jewelry, Seychelles and Africa...
2009-08-28 09:08:00
It has been a while since I published my "Picks" or "Links" of the week, so time to catch up:Project Diaspora is all about empowering Africa by Africans. Read their moving pledge.WikiGender is a Wiki aimed at exchanging and improving the knowledge on gender-related issues around the world.On a lighter note: Africa goes webcam with this Kilimanjaro webcam.And even lighter: Gado is one of the true great African cartoonists.The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organisations at Harvard University now features its own blog with some in depth coverage of international justice and human rights.It is great to see blogs, as a social media advocacy tool, to go mainstream. My list of nonprofit blogs became so large I could not feature them on The Road anymore, so I collected them on a Delicious bookmark list. I tagged them differently for organisations, individuals, magazines, teams and projects.A collection of the latest articles of these blogs, you find on nonprofitblogs.info.One example of a UN ...
More About: Jewelry , Week

Let me introduce to you... Ahmed, the dead terrorist
2009-08-27 18:20:00
You might be surprised I post this video. Humour about terrorism, blabla. Then again, where I come from, we make jokes about anything and everything. The more sarcastic, the better. Guess it is our way of "dealing with stuff".So here,.... Ahmed The Dead Terrorist . Politically far from correct, but ever so funny...

Me? I did not do a thing !
2009-08-27 00:53:00
We keep on moving on The Road. Last week, we had a long weekend here in Rome, and I took the opportunity of doing some major clean-up and re-organisation of my blog network.- I checked all links I have in the aid resources, aid worker blogs and aid news widgets in the side column to see if they were still valid.- As the list has expanded to over 400 links, it became impossible to manage manually, so I extracted all nonprofit blogs (excluding those from aidworkers) and put them in a dedicated delicious folder.- While I was at it, I made an aggregator of these nonprofit blogs. Check out NonProfit Blogs, and linked a Twitter account to it: @NonProfitBlogs- As I scanned over 200 of these blogs within 24 hours, I got a good view as to what's up in the nonprofit blogging world. And I wrote a post about my findings on BlogTips.- I also turfed all these blogs for their pageranks, and... (yes, you guessed it!)... wrote a post about it. :-)- One of the tools I use extensively to aggregate RS...
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Picture of the Day: Unicef in a message
2009-08-26 19:02:00
"Los sueños de los niños no pueden morir" means "Children's dreams can not die"This UNICEF ad is so simple and powerful, it hurts.More Picture s of the Day on The RoadPicture courtesy Ads of the World and advertising agency OUT (Santiago Chile)
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10 seconds of sunset over Lake Bolsena
2009-08-24 00:09:00
A snapshot of tonight's sunset over Lake Bolsena, about two hours North of Rome. The wind settled, the clouds disappeared, and lake became quiet.
More About: Sunset

Obama: H1N1 prevention? Yes, we can!
2009-08-22 11:40:00
Picture courtesy of my colleague aidworker Paul, blogging at Head Down, Eyes Open. Even though Paul was much more serious about H1N1 in his post. (Sorry Paul...!)
More About: Obama , Prevention

Rumble: Airport confusion
2008-06-11 00:01:00
I flew to Brindisi again, this evening. Rome to Brindisi is served by Alitalia ("Always Late In Take-off, Always Late In Arrival") or AirOne ("Air-One, Baggage-Zero"). This evening, I was booked on AirOne (and no, I did not risk to check any baggage in, otherwise I had 75% chance to spend the next day speaking to the lady at the lost luggage counter).A bus was taking us from the terminal to the plane at Fiumicion airport. The bus zigzagged in-between parked planes, stopping here, and stopping there, until it parked itself next to an empty AirOne plane. Driver got out, talked to some guy next to the plane, who pointed to a Blu-Express plane a bit further on the tarmac. The driver was lost, did not know which plane to drive us to.The bus drove to the Blu-Express plane. The passengers got off but were confused. "We were supposed to fly AirOne, not Blu-Express. Blu-Express does not fly to Brindisi", they mumbled. Some went up the stairs, came back down, and finally we boarded after it w...
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Rumble: If you had only one more lecture to give.
2008-06-09 09:24:00
"If your time here had come to an end, and you had one more lecture to give, one more message to bring, what would it be?".Randy Pauch, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, put "The Last Lecture" challenge into practice. The video moved me, and it will move you.You can follow Randy's moments on his site.Added to "My Inspirational Videos" on The RoadWith thanks to Worldman and Pumuckl
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Rumble: Kalidasa, a walk and flowers.
2008-06-08 22:08:00
My apartment is part of a several two story houses, clustered together. All apartments are on the first floor, and underneath, there are several small shops.As of 6:30 am, I hear Laura, my neighbour, opening the coffee bar downstairs. By 7 am, Valentina opens up her newspaper shop, followed by Theresa and her dry cleaning shop half an hour later. Around 11, Antonio and his family open up the restaurant.For miles around, there are no other shops nor restaurants, so come winter, come summer, come rain, hail or sun, the community congregates around this small area, from early morning to late in the evening.There is always laughter from children playing in the street, chatter from the people sitting on the terrace, greeting the passers-by "Ciao, caro!" "Come stai, bella?"..This afternoon, I was sitting on my terrace, reading in the sun, engulfed by the background chit-chattering, kids laughter and the scent of the flowers blooming all around. I went for a gelato, and walked up to the be...
More About: Flowers , Rome , Walk

Rumble: Discovering Puglia
2008-06-08 19:15:00
As I was in Brindisi two weeks ago, I spent the weekend discovering Puglia , the South-Eastern tip of Italy, driving around the "heel of the Italian boot".This part of the country, filled with vineyards and olive tree farms is more or less left aside by international tourists, even tough it features an unspoiled nature, sand beaches as well a rocky coastline dotted with cliffs. While in the summer this region must be scorched by the sun, this time of the year, the temperature is just right.Many parts of Puglia either remind me of the Balkans, or of Greece. Exotic enough to make one dream.Early morning views in St. Maria de Leuca:Midday in Gallipoli:

Rumble: Be the Change You Want to See
2008-06-08 13:20:00
"Be the change you want to see" by singer/songwriter Kat Edmonson. Now added to "My Inspiration Videos" on The Road.Inspired by Positive Communications
More About: Change

News: Sandinista priest presides UN General Assembly
2008-06-07 20:43:00
Former Nicaragua n Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann is elected president of the U.N. General Assembly . His bio is more interesting than merely "being a US born Roman Catholic priest".He backed the revolution in Nicaragua, joining Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega's government as foreign minister, a period sprouting fierce US under cover opposition in the so-called "contra-revolution".D'Escoto's anti-American past includes successfully taking the US to the International Court of Justice in the Hague for arming Contra rebels and staging a hunger strike against U.S. policy.In 2004 he told a U.S. news program former President Ronald Reagan was "the butcher of my people" and called President George W. Bush Reagan's "spiritual heir". (Full)In his acceptance speech, he said "(..)love is what is most needed in this world. Selfishness is what has gotten us into the terrible quagmire in which the world is sinking, almost irreversibly, unless something big happens."d'Escoto spoke ...
More About: News , General Assembly