Long-form, personal conversations with international development and humanitarian aid practitioners, thinkers, activists, academics and more. Conversations center on lived experiences and reflections on ethical issues, power dynamics, systemic challenges and lessons learnt. Common themes: redistributing power, working with diverse stakeholders, negotiating partnerships, measuring impact, learning from mistakes, doing no harm, building trust, ensuring accountability, rejecting saviour complexes, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, and much more.
In this episode, Noaman and Safa reflect on the emergence, spread, political economy and impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on development work. ---> Link to Noaman's podcast ( Introduction to Political Economy).
Referring to Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang's article " Decolonization is Not a Metaphor ", Safa and Noaman discuss the overuse and misuse of the term “decolonization” in the development sector and how Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral can be role models for development workers. Links we mention: Intro to Political Economy Podcast with Noaman Ali Decolonization is not a Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang...
For our Season 4 finale, we share a compilation of clips from our past 50+ episodes!
Daniel Kobei is the Founder and Executive Director of the Ogiek Peoples' Development Program , a Kenyan NGO working to secure human and land rights for the Indigenous Ogiek community as well as other Indigenous peoples across Kenya and Africa. Daniel represents Indigenous peoples under the umbrella of the International Indigenous Forum for Biodiversity and the Collaborative Partnership for Wildlife Management, set by the Convention of Biological Diversity. Daniel has been promoting the restorati...
Dr. Sabina Faiz Rashid is the Dean of the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Bangladesh. Dr. Rashid specializes in ethnographic and qualitative research with a focus on urban slum communities and marginalized groups. She's particularly interested in examining the impact of structural and intersectional factors on the ability of those populations to realize their health rights and access to services. In 2008, she founded the Center for Gender, Sexual and Reproductiv...
Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist, political ecologist, and Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology in the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies. His research is motivated by a quest to cross conceptual divides between the social and the natural domains, with particular focus on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income, and class. His current work explores the hypothesis o...
Mahrukh 'Maya' Hasan is as a designer, researcher and strategic advisor who helps social impact organizations build joyful, equitable and innovative teams. She's the Founder and Director of Azura Labs , a social design and research studio that builds the capacity of international NGOs and UN agencies serving communities in Sub Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia. Last March, Maya also founded the Fearless Project , a diversity, equity and inclusion firm, which aims to champion trust, bel...
Andrea Cornwall is currently Pro Director of Research and Enterprise and Professor of Global Development and Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She is a political anthropologist and her research focuses on power, inclusion and rights. Some of her work has focused on reproductive and sexual health in Zimbabwe and Nigeria, citizen participation and accountability in health policy and governance in the UK and Brazil, and contestations over gender...
Shanthini Naidoo is a South African writer and former Sunday Times journalist. She is the author of the book which in South Africa is entitled: " Women in Solitary: Inside the Female Resistance to Apartheid " and in North America is entitled: " Women Surviving Apartheid Prisons ". The book uses rich interview material to share the stories of four anti apartheid women leaders and activists who were part of “Trial 22” in 1969. They were held in solitary confinement and subjected to brutal torture ...
Marvi Rebueno-Trudeau is the Deputy-Executive Director of the Pilipinas Shell Foundation. She initially studied business management and founded a firm which represented foreign companies at the Asian Development Bank. Later she retired to Palawan, an island in the Philippines archipelago. Once there she was moved to come out of retirement in order to address various social issues in the community, namely malnutrition and high rates of malaria. She joined Pilipinas Shell Foundation, which funded ...
Professor Haroon Akram-Lodhi teaches agrarian political economy at Trent University. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies, an Associate Editor of Feminist Economics, as well as a member of the Advisory Board for the Woman's Rights program of the Open Society Foundations. He further provides extensive advisory services to various UN agencies, including UN Women and the United Nations Development Program. And recently he repackaged some of his university courses...
Palwasha Hassan is a women's rights and peace activist who has pioneered many critical initiatives for the promotion of women's rights and civil society in Afghanistan. She has over 20 years of experience working in development and on women's rights and empowerment issues, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She is a founding member of several civil society groups, including the Afghan Women's Education Center , Afghan Women's Network and Roazana. In addition she is a two time elected chairperson ...
Jessica Oddy is an education in emergencies specialist and a PhD candidate at the University of East London's Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging, where she's also a lecturer as part of an Open Learning Initiative Higher Education preparation course for asylum seekers and refugees. Her current research focuses on diverse young people's experiences of education in emergencies, colonial legacies, and how race power and privilege intersect with humanitarian education responses. She has wor...
Uma Mishra-Newberry is a global social justice advocate and women's rights leader. She began her career in the US Army before becoming an educator and community organizer in the nonprofit and development sectors. She's the former Executive Director of Women's March Global and the initiator of and lead facilitator for the Racial Equity Index . We speak about: community organizing building an intersectional feminist movement being in a position of leadership the crisis of funding in the women’s mo...
In the last episode of our S 3, host Safa shares some reflections and reads out letters from our listeners. We will be back soon with our S 4!
Dr. Mohamed Ashmawey worked in program management and leadership in the private sector for 20 years, with organizations such as General Motors and the National Bank of Egypt. Later he joined the nonprofit sector as CEO of Islamic Relief USA, where he was credited with transforming the corporate culture of the NGO. He went on to become the CEO of Islamic Relief Worldwide, where he continued to lead quality improvements and organizational transformation. Since 2019, he has been serving as the CEO ...
Dr. Deepak Gupta has over 28 years of experience as a program and strategic communication advisor for various UN agencies - including UNFPA, UNODC, UNICEF and WHO. He has designed and managed numerous large strategic communication interventions and advocacy campaigns on various development and health issues. His work on risk communication strategies in emergency situations, such as post-tsunami situations and avian influenza contexts, is particularly well noted. He is also a master trainer and e...
Rita Thapa has over 35 years of experience as a feminist educator and a community activist in Nepal and internationally. She is the founder of Tewa, the innovative philanthropic Nepal women's fund, and Nagarik Aawaz, a NGO engaged in conflict transformation and peace-building in Nepal. She's also the former Chair of the Executive Board of the Global Fund for Women and former Vice Chair of the Executive Board of the Urgent Action Fund. She currently serves as Chair of the Executive Board of the G...
Noaman Ali is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. His research and teaching concerns the political economy of development. His current research examines rural class struggle, land reforms and sub national state formation in Pakistan, through a case study of the Frontier peasant movement in the former North West Frontier Province, led by the Mazdoor Kisan party in the 1970s. His work is interdisciplinary, bringing a histo...
Wafaa Saeed is currently the Deputy Director in the Operations and Advocacy division, covering Eastern and Southern Africa at UN OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She has over 20 years of humanitarian work experience in complex settings. She has worked with WFP, UN OCHA and UNICEF in various roles in Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Syria, Pakistan and other countries. Prior to joining the UN, Wafaa worked as a lecturer at the University of Khartoum and as a...
Tanya Wood has more than 20 years of management experience in the humanitarian sector, in both headquarters and countries such as Guyana, Sri Lanka and Haiti. Her career has been focused on leadership roles within international membership organizations, including the IFRC, International Council of Voluntary Agencies, Neglected Tropical Disease NGO Network, and others. She is currently the Executive Director of the CHS Alliance and co-author of the Humanitarian Accountability Report 2020: Are we ...
Shuaib Chalklen is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. During his term as UN Special Rapporteur he established the African Disability Forum and served as its first Chairperson. He currently serves as the Regional Coordinator for their Inclusion Works Program. Prior to this he worked in the Office of the President in South Africa and was responsible for developing South Africa’s first policy on disability rights. He is furthermore the co-editor of the book...
Ousman Umar is a former child migrant who spent four years travelling on foot from Ghana to Libya to Spain. In 2012 he founded an NGO named NASCO Feeding Minds, which aims to create a network of IT centers with computer classrooms in rural Ghana in order to familiarize students with digital tools and facilitate their access to information. He has recently launched a social enterprise named NASCO Tech: Code Made in Africa, which aims to provide job opportunities for young IT graduates. He is also...
Jessica Alexander is the editor of The New Humanitarian’s Rethinking Humanitarianism series. She is also a humanitarian aid worker with experience working in operations, evaluations, and policy. She has worked in Rwanda, Sudan, Haiti and other countries. Currently she teacher humanitarian affairs at numerous universities and has authored various policy papers, mainstream articles and a book entitled: “Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid.” She speak to us about: questioning he...
Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda is a human rights lawyer who has a decade of experience working with UNICEF other UN agencies and NGOs in the US, France, DR Congo, Mauritania, Nigeria and other countries. Her work has focused on strengthening national policies for the most vulnerable populations around the world, including working on child protection issues in emergencies. She has led the release and reintegration of children associated to armed groups and forces, incarcerated children as well as sur...
Dr. Filiberto Penados is a Maya educator and activist scholar whose work focuses on indigenous education and future-making. He has held faculty positions at the University of Belize and Galen University and has been adjunct faculty at University of Toronto, University of Belize and University of Manitoba. He has a long history of involvement in indigenous movements in Belize and Central America. He has taught, written and presented on various topics including the decolonization of education and ...
In this episode, host Safa shares some thoughts about the evolution of the podcast, some common topics of past episodes and what to expect from season 3.
Yukako Sato worked with the World Food Programme (WFP) for 17 years. For the first half of her career, she coordinated food assistance programmes in countries such as Tajikistan, the Darfur region of Sudan and Yemen during the Arab Spring years. In her last assignment, she worked at the WFP headquarters as the Staffing Coordinator for the programme and policy function globally. In that role, Yukako facilitated the provision of talent management support that impacted about a quarter of the organi...
Kaveh Zahedi is the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP). He oversees ESCAP’s economic, social and environmental programmes and the overall implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Prior to this, Kaveh worked at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the Regional Director and Representative for Asia and the Pacific and Deputy Director of the Division of Technology, Industry and Econom...
Angela Bruce-Raeburn is currently the Regional Advocacy Director at the Global Health Advocacy Incubator, which supports advocates that work for the prevention of non communicable diseases that impact low and middle income countries. Previously she worked as the Senior Policy Advisor for the humanitarian response of Oxfam in Haiti from 2010 to 2013 in the aftermath of the earthquake. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Angela grew up in Brooklyn, New York. The immigrant experience drove her interest an...
