Trevor Mattos is a Pike Scholar at Gordon College, Massachusetts. Earlier this year he and a colleague Miranda MacKinnon travelled to Togo, West Africa to direct a Development and Public Health project that had been planned since the previous year.
This project report details the establishment of the ‘The Learn Africa Project’ and highlights some of the challenges and planning required in establishing a community development and public health project from the base up in a Developing Country. It also highlights the principle research undertaken in preparation for the estabishment of the project.
Report Author: Trevor Mattos
Latest Updates
The Learn Africa Project: Public Health, Applied Learning and Research Internship
How can NGOs practice ‘doing good’ and minimise ‘doing harm’? What are the dilemmas and challenges present?
Promoting human rights, driving the cause against climate change, and at the forefront of disaster relief; non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have an essential role in addressing the issues of global poverty and injustice. Despite good intentions, harmful conduct can arise at any time without an NGO even being aware.
This Paper by Carly Garonne contributes to the growing body of research on ‘doing good’ and minimising ‘doing harm’ by arguing that harm can be reduced by deeply understanding the context of each programme, taking a rights-based approach and conducting participatory work. Additionally, one of the most important means, albeit controversial, is to record failure.
Due to the complexities of this debate, this paper specifically concentrates on the role of international NGOs (INGOs) in order to channel the research. The content is structured into three parts beginning with an overview of INGOs in a modern context to show that growing pressure is being placed on NGOs to increase effectiveness and be accountable for their actions. The dilemmas facing INGOs will be analysed in part two, through the provision of numerous examples and case studies to highlight existing challenges. To finish, general principles that all INGOs can adopt to increase effectiveness will be presented.
Author: Carly Garonne
How can NGOs practice ‘doing good’ and minimise ‘doing harm’? What are the dilemmas and challenges present? (117)
Globalization, Regulation and Geography: The Development of the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands Offshore Financial Centres
This Ph.D. thesis – completed in 1996 – used the development of the Bahamas and Cayman Offshore Financial Centres as a lens to understand the evolving relationship between globalization and sovereignty.
Chapter one asks: “what explains the emergence of these new places – offshore financial centres – on the map of international political economy?” Chapter two critically reviews the literature around the themes of globalization, regulation and geography. Chapter three is a “methodology” chapter. Chapter four begins to explore the development of the Bahamas and Cayman OFCs, examining the regulatory construction of place. Chapter five expands the focus to consider the relationship between the Bahamas and Cayman OFCs and how this relationship has affected their development. Chapter six explores the wider regulatory landscape, looking at the relationship of the Bahamas and Cayman OFCs with the USA and at their place within the regulatory framework for international banking provided by the Basle Committee. Chapter seven brings together some of the insights from earlier chapters and puts the “regulatory landscape” metaphor to work, moving towards an explanation for the development of OFCs and processes of financial globalization.
It is argued that the development of stateless monies, particularly since the late 1960s, produced an economic space of flows, increasingly divorced from the political space of states and the productive economy. The OFCs, through the practice of unbundling sovereignty, articulate the economic and political spaces of capitalism.
Author: Alan Hudson
Globalization, Regulation and Geography: The Development of the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands Offshore Financial Centres (71)
Global Civil Society and the Developing World
One of the principal goals of the formation and the study of a global civil society is to measure its influence and effect on what galvanises the majority of NGOs around the world: the combating of the causes of global inequality and of poverty and easing of its effects. No more is this felt acutely than in the Developing world. The poorest nations are often those which suffer from the highest degrees of mismanagement and this often compels civil society to respond. In the developing world the re-emergence of states from colonial and into often an authoritarian post-colonial rule has invigorated civil society.
Towards a Global Civil Society: An evaluation of the evolving inter-relationship of Non- Governmental Organisations, International Organisations and the State (361)
Featured Projects
The Learn Africa Project: Public Health, Applied Learning and Research Internship
Trevor Mattos is a Pike Scholar at Gordon College, Massachusetts. Earlier this year he and a colleague Miranda MacKinnon travelled to Togo, West Africa to direct a Development and Public Health project that had been planned since the previous year.
This project report details the establishment of the ‘The Learn Africa Project’ and highlights some of the challenges and planning required in establishing a community development and public health project from the base up in a Developing Country. It also highlights the principle research undertaken in preparation for the estabishment of the project.
Report Author: Trevor Mattos
Demographic Dimensions and their Implications on the Incidence of Street Begging in Urban Areas of Central Tanzania: The Case of Dodoma and Singida Municipalities
This study explores the implications of demographic dimensions on the incidence of street begging in urban areas of central Tanzania with Dodoma and Singida Municipalities as case studies. This study was conducted on different days at different streets and public spaces in Dodoma and Singida Municipalities to obtain data on incidence of street begging. A cross-sectional survey was employed and involved 130 street beggars. Structured questionnaires were administered on randomly selected beggars to obtain data on their demographic dimensions. Group discussions, key informant interview, and observations were also used to collect data relevant for the study.
Authors:Baltazar M.L. Namwata, Maseke R. Mgabo and Provident Dimoso
Demographic Dimensions and their Implications on the Incidence of Street Begging in Urban Areas of Central Tanzania (545)
Dadaab Refugee Camps, Kenya
With conflict and continuing uncertainty affecting the future of Somalia following the US backed Ethiopian invasion it is little wonder Somalis continue to flee their disintegrating country. Since the early 1990’s when large scale civil war broke out the Somali Diaspora has spread far and wide. Nearly a million have fled to already poor neighbouring countries and 400,000 of those headed south to Kenya. Though many have managed to return since there remains over 100,000 mostly Somali refugees in Northern and Eastern Kenya.
Featured Articles & Papers
Focus on Corruption: How to secure the aims of decentralization in Peru by improving good governance at the regional level
Decentralization holds out the promise of improving democratic participation and public service delivery, but this can be undermined where week institutions allow corruption to flourish. In this joint policy analysis paper, the authors create an econometric model of corruption at the regional level in Peru to inform policy recommendations aimed at the Peruvian National Council of Decentralization and the Office of the Public Defender. The paper was awarded Most Outstanding Policy Analysis in 2005 at the MPA/ID program at Harvard Kennedy School.
Authors: Aaron Ausland and Alfonso Tolmos
Focus on Corruption: How to secure the aims of decentralization in Peru by improving good governance at the regional level
‘Money does not always talk’ – Reassessing the Empowerment Potential of Women’s Employment
It has often been assumed that, as a result of access to financial resources, women’s employment would lead to their empowerment. However, this link is not as straightforward as examples from Kenya and Bangladesh show: Firstly, intra-household dynamics shape women’s control over income and secondly, even when they have control, it does not necessarily lead to a transformation of their subordinate status. This paper examines fundamental problems in defining and measuring empowerment and in this context depicts underlying normative Western ideas about agency, emancipation and modernity. The paper argues for the inclusion of the women concerned in policy-making in order to construct locally relevant indicators for empowerment.
Author:David Parduhn
‘Money does not always talk’ - Reassessing the Empowerment Potential of Women’s Employment (223)
Allah and Micro-Finance? Investigating Islamic Banking Principles in Indonesia’s Microfinance Sector, and its Potential for Economic Empowerment
Poverty is widely conceived to be the largest moral and economic challenge of this century, and thus it comes as no surprise that the first Millennium Development Goal attempts to tackle the issue of poverty eradication. One increasingly significant instrument of poverty alleviation and community development is that of microcredit and microsavings, popularized by Professor Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank.
However in Indonesia alone over half of the national population live on -or under- a mere US 2% daily.The successful establishment of microfinance institutions in the Muslim world could prove to be a valuable asset in the fight against poverty. However, an additional obstacle is posed by Islamic shariah which challenges conventional banking principles, mandating and promoting its own Islamic banking principles instead.
In this paper, the main question that will be addressed is whether the application of Islamic banking principles to microfinance in Indonesia has been more beneficial in promoting economic growth among the Muslim poor than conventional microfinance practices. And further, what this application can imply for the rest of the Muslim world.
Author:Amina Samy
Allah and Micro-Finance? Investigating Islamic Banking Principles in Indonesia's Microfinance Sector, and its Potential for Economic Empowerment (420)
