More From the Blog

  • April 9, 2019

    Technology strengthens resilience

    An Interview with
    Josh Woodard, Regional ICT and Digital Finance Advisor, Asia Pacific, FHI 360

    Digital technology offers promising ways to solve some of the world’s development challenges. At FHI 360, we are applying new and existing technologies to build resilience among the communities where we work.

    What is technology for resilience?

    Let’s look at what we mean by resilience. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defines it as “ the ability of people, households, communities, countries and systems to mitigate, adapt to and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.”

    Recently, we’ve been using The Rockefeller Foundation’s definition: “Resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities and systems to survive, adapt and grow in the face of stress and shocks, and even transform when conditions require it.”  

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  • April 4, 2019

    The darker side of development: Consequences of development efforts on the environment

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    Are our growth-based models of modernization at odds with sustainable development? Does addressing environmental concerns need to take a back seat to economic growth in order to alleviate poverty? And is it reasonable to expect people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from to care about the environment?

    In this episode, I sit down with Heather Tallis, Global Managing Director and Lead Scientist for Strategy Innovation for the Nature Conservancy, who dispels the myths and assumptions around the interplay of conservation and safeguarding the environment with meeting human needs and raising living standards. Marshaling the evidence, Heather makes the case that there doesn’t have to be a tradeoff between economic growth and poverty alleviation and conservation and that development goals and environmental goals can go hand in hand.

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  • March 21, 2019

    Engaging the private sector in the fight to end TB

    Written by
    Dr. Lisa Stevens, Senior Technical Advisor, TB and HIV, FHI 360
    Dr. Otto Chabikuli, Director of Global Health, Population and Nutrition, FHI 360

    In Cambodia, Chea Ru, a mother of five, suffered from classic tuberculosis (TB) symptoms of protracted cough, persistent fever, night sweats and profound weight loss. For more than a year, she was misdiagnosed and unsuccessfully treated by private for-profit providers, including traditional healers and doctors. Her health continued to decline and family finances suffered until, through FHI 360-supported community screening, she was finally correctly diagnosed.

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  • March 6, 2019

    The darker side of development: Ambitious goals or unrealistic objectives?

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    Do we set unrealistic expectations within the development community for what can be achieved in the time and with the resources available? What are the benefits and consequences of setting ambitious goals?

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  • February 11, 2019

    The darker side of development: Good intentions, negative consequences

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    This year, A Deeper Look is exploring the theme of the darker side of development, the paradoxes or unintended consequences that surround international development efforts.

    In this episode, I speak with Raj Kumar, founding President and Editor-in-Chief of Devex, the media platform for global development. We explore how good intentions can lead to negative consequences in development, the ways that development is shifting away from a top-down approach and how concepts drawn from commercial development, such as customer satisfaction and creative destruction, relate to human development.

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  • January 16, 2019

    The darker side of development: Networks of corruption

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    There is something about the promise of a new year – the idea that the new year can bring change for the better. Many of us working in global development choose this work because we believe we can make a positive difference in the world.

    For 2019, we have decided to take a deeper look at issues that global development actors often shy away from discussing – the paradoxes and unintended consequences of global development. We’re calling this year’s theme the “darker side” of development, but my hope is that this season will shed light on issues we need to be thinking about as a development community, so that we can make our work more relevant and effective.

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  • January 14, 2019

    Growth, focus and evolution: How INGOs are changing the impact investing landscape

    Written by
    Susan Barrows Libby, Managing Partner , Kito Global
    Stephanie Marienau Turpin, Associate Director, Strategic Partnerships, FHI 360

    Since the term “impact investing” took hold more than a decade ago, we’ve known that making investments that create positive social or environmental impact and generate a financial return would require engagement from both the social and private sectors. However, it wasn’t until 2016 that the extent of the work of international nonprofits in impact investing was revealed, when members of the International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO) Impact Investing Network released their inaugural piece of thought leadership: Amplifyii:The INGO Value Proposition for Impact Investing. That report, featured in the NextBillion post Philanthropy is Changing Fast: 12 Lessons from Three Reports, was the first real landscape report charting the work of INGOs in impact investing. Two years later, the network came back together to release the next chapter of the story of INGOs in impact investing: Amplifyii: The Next Mile of Impact Investing for INGOs.

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  • January 10, 2019

    The critical role of logistics in crisis response

    An Interview with
    Yves Kavanagh, Associate Director of Operations and Logistics, West Africa and Middle East Regional Office, FHI 360

    Since 2009, nearly 24.5 million people living in northeast Nigeria have been directly or indirectly affected by the Boko Haram conflict. Northeast Nigeria has more than two million internally displaced persons, with 1.4 million residing in Borno State alone. FHI 360’s Integrated Humanitarian Assistance to Northeast Nigeria (IHANN) project delivers primary and reproductive health care; gender-based violence protection; nutrition; and water, sanitation and hygiene interventions to meet the most immediate needs of this population.

    When IHANN teams began work in 2017, health and medical supplies were not always available. Yves Kavanagh, Associate Director of Operations and Logistics for FHI 360’S West Africa and Middle East Regional Office, discusses the critical importance of logistics to an effective crisis response program.

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  • December 17, 2018

    Eleven takeaways about humanitarian crises and emergency response

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    This year, I dedicated my monthly podcast, A Deeper Look, to examining humanitarian crises and emergency response. I had the opportunity to talk with senior leaders, youth and seasoned humanitarians who offered multiple perspectives on how this issue impacts communities and people in such areas as gender, technology, food security and education.

    Although the topics covered in our conversations varied widely, my guests were unified in their belief that the nature of humanitarian crises has changed over the years. We are seeing historic levels of people who are displaced by conflict for longer periods than in the past, and the number of natural disasters is increasing. We discussed how the changing characteristics of these crises are radically altering the way we do development. My guests and I also talked about some of the courageous, innovative responses that give us hope for the future.

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  • December 13, 2018

    Digital technology planning tool to improve your solution evaluation and partner due diligence

    Written by
    Josh Woodard, Regional ICT and Digital Finance Advisor, Asia Pacific, FHI 360

    Over the past decade, I’ve worked with countless of organizations around the world to help them to think about how they can use digital technology more effectively and appropriately in their work.

    One of the most common challenges that I’ve found is that their approach to deciding on what technologies to use and who to partner with is often more ad hoc and opportunistic than deliberate and strategic.

    I don’t say this to lay blame. Particularly for organizations with limited applied experience using digital technology in their programs — as opposed to for internal IT — it can be difficult to know what questions they should be asking and what types of things they should be planning for.

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