Focus Podcast

Focus: is an audio project from Comhlámh, the association of returned development workers and volunteers. Produced and hosted by Mark Malone, Focus is a mix of documentaries and and interviews. Over time it takes a varied look at issues and themes around global inequality and talks to people involved in different ways in challenging inequality and injustices wherever they are.

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Episodes

Focus: Green New Deal, Just Transition and Covid 19

Todays guests are Lorna King, Conor McCabe and Sean McCabe. What are the kinds of things we need to think about and act on to realise a New Green Deal and Just Transition in the time of COVID19. Economies across the world deliberately put into deep freeze as part of halting the spread of the virus. Stay at home measures, massive unemployment and unprecedented state intervention contrary to accepted norms of neoliberal democracies have trailed the spread of the virus as it continues to move acros...

May 25, 2020•1 hr 13 min

Focus: Social Justice and Radical Hope in a Global Pandemic

Three Comhlámh staff members, Sive Bresnihan, Caoimhe Butterly and Mark Malone asked if it were possible to have radical hope and show solidarity with social justice issues during a global pandemic, when people are experiencing such challenging feelings. Mark Malone, who is Comhlámh’s communications officer, started the discussion by noting the number of deaths from Covid-19 and he reminded the listener that these were real people who were mourned by families and friends around the world. He the...

May 18, 2020•50 min

Focus: Visiting Achill Island, global health and growing inequality

We headed to Achill island for the the second International Health and Development Training for Healthcare Workers. Organised for people interested in volunteering or working in healthcare in less developed countries, this two day residential workshop of the west coast of Ireland looks at the nature of global health care in resource poor settings. Focus spoke to organisers about why the weekend was put together and about the big picture politics around global inequality and health. Focus is an a...

Dec 02, 2019•30 min

Focus: The Cambodia-Ireland Changemaker Network

Focus dropped into Donabate-Portrane Educate Together National School (DPETNS) and PEPY Empowering Youth during an exchange visit to speak about the work of the Cambodia Ireland Changemaker Network. The network has developed from 2013, when four young Irish teachers from Dublin travelled to Cambodia seeking to establish an educational partnership that would benefit both Irish and Cambodian students. A partnership was established between DPETNS and PEPY Empowering Youth, based on strong principle...

Nov 18, 2019•28 min

Focus: Eilish Dillon on rethinking the divide between community and international development

Focus has a chat with Dr Eilish Dillon, exploring some of the ideas, assumptions and practices underpinning much of the work of the international development sector in Ireland and elsewhere. We explore the problematic and artificial divide between community and international development that has evolved over times. Eilish shines a light on the way that the language of international development and ‘social justice’ can disguise power imbalances and lead to choices of actions around change, that a...

Nov 04, 2019•30 min

Focus: Extinction Rebellion, Civil Disobedience and Social Change

This episode is an edit of an panel discussion on “Civil Disobedience and Social Change” that took place in the Teacher Club in Dublin a few weeks ago. While the discussion looks at civil disobedience in the general sense, a lot of the conversation revolved around challenging preconceptions of the term as well as its limitations. A significant theme arising in the discussion focused Extinction Rebellion’s organising models, strategy and the perceived lack of politics in the context of civil diso...

Oct 21, 2019•56 min

Focus: Children First, Ending Volunteering In Orphanages

It is estimated that around 80% of children and young people living in orphanages and other institutional settings, have at least one parent alive. It is known now that institutional living is really damaging for children and young people. They are more vulnerable to abuse and very often forced to live in situations that are detrimental to emotional, social and educational development. Yet across the globe, people continue to travel to the global south, with the best of intentions, to volunteer ...

Oct 07, 2019•28 min

Focus: Ethical Living and Social Change

In the time of late capitalism, growing inequality and increasing awareness of causes and impacts of climate crisis, what does it mean to live ethically? Our social media is saturated with perspectives around plastic use and ecological degradation, around industrialised agriculture and competing arguments for why mass population shifts to veganism can or can’t address climate change. We are presented with a myriad of personal choices presented as ethical living, but is it possible to harness ind...

Sep 23, 2019•1 hr 3 min

Focus: Conor McCabe talks about his book ‘Money’

In this episode Conor McCabe chats to Eilish Dillon, head of The Department of International Development Maynooth to discuss latest book ‘Money’. Money exists in an opaque space, with its own language and gatekeepers to knowledge. As citizens we are required to support the profit-seeking strategies of financial institutions, but we are not supposed to question those strategies, the logic that underpins them, nor the power relations that envelop its world. Conor’s book is written to help change t...

Sep 09, 2019•41 min

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