Behavior, Psychology, and International Development

I recently learned that a friend and colleague from grad school, Bryan Turner, passed away unexpectedly. Bryan is a tireless (literally) advocate for ending extreme poverty around the world (*). He approaches this advocacy, like everything he does, in an extreme and passionate way. You can read a bit about him here, and support his passion to end extreme poverty here.

Rather than use this space to share specific thoughts or feelings, I just wanted to present a few of his recent posts - about the need to understand the psychology of behavior change for international development work - check them out, if you like:

• Psychology of belief change - How do people change their minds about issues?
• The need to apply behavioral sciences to development - It’s time for policy makers to enter the 21st century

(*) = Not ready to change tenses

Support Young Peruvian Women Coders at Laboratoria

Laboratoria is a social enterprise in Peru that trains young women to become employed web programmers. One of its founders is my former classmate at Columbia SIPA MPA-DP, Mariana Costa, who saw technology and entrepreneurial spirit as tools for supporting low income Peruvians to succeed. Laboratoria finds talented women youth from low-income backgrounds who cannot afford higher education and immerses them in a 6-month code bootcamp and leadership program. Upon graduation, Laboratoria supports them in job placement with tech companies in Lima.

Laboratoria is in the midst of an Indegogo campaign to get the funding needed to launch the next class in January 2015. They are very close to their goal, and could use some help to get there before the campaign ends (17 December). Check out the campaign here - it sounds like a really great program, and I know the people behind Laboratoria are very skilled, intelligent, creative, and passionate.

Responding to Questions about Development Work

A few weeks ago, Jonathan Favini,  a recently-graduated development professional posted a reflective essay at WhyDev about working in development despite its flaws and challenges. It also dealt with communicating your work to people who do not understand it completely. Take a look here: Cognitive Dissonance an Unspoken Qualification for Aid Work?
Jonathan closed his post with the following questions for others working in the sector:

How have you integrated recognition of the industry’s flaws into your professional identity? How have you learned to recognize development’s problems, while continuing to work in the field or advocating for its expansion? How do you motivate yourselves on tough days when you doubt the impact of your efforts?

Among others, WhyDev reached out to me to respond (perhaps based on my own quarrels with some of these questions in the past). You can see my brief response here, as well as a response from Chad Bissonnette of Roots of Development.

Here is a part of my reply:

To motivate myself in this work, I try to do the following: learn from mistakes and errors (both mine and others’) to avoid repeating them and to improve other work; make special note of success stories when I do find them and remember them for future reference; and never take myself too seriously, especially in interactions with people offering praise for ‘doing good work’ or ‘helping people.’ They may mean well, but they do not fully understand the work I do (and that’s not really their fault, either).

Propaganda Posters Reimagined: Green Revolution

[I am toying with some ideas for semi-regular blog features to get me posting more often. This one, Propaganda Posters Reimagined, will be an occasional development-themed take on some classic works of propaganda from throughout history.]

Today's installment: The Green Revolution

(Source of original image here)

Rice Basket: Markets and El Niño; Prawn-Fish-Rice

[I am toying with some ideas for semi-regular blog features to get me posting more often. This one, Rice Basket, will be an occasional collection of rice-related stories I found interesting. Or, more interesting than normal, since we all agree that rice is super-interesting. Right?]

• Putting the "rice" into "price" forecasting - The global rice market winks at El Niño and Thai problems: IRRI looks at where the rice market may be headed - early signs look good, but severe El Niño conditions and/or poor government policy reactions could lead to another rice price crisis (see what I did there?)
• Old synergies for new benefits - Climate Change Adaptation and Prawn-Fish-Rice Agroecosystems: Stuart Bunting posts on the LPFN blog about a climate adaptation strategy based in a Bangladeshi tradition of synergistic prawn-fish-rice culture.