Transpacencygate! Updates

The following updates have taken place since the original post:

Aug 26 - Lova Rakotomalala post
Aug 27 - Counterpart Int'l response
Aug 28 - TI Georgia supports Bruckner
Aug 28 - TI comments
Sept 1 - CARE comments

I feel the need to post these updates for two reasons.  First, when I post this it will be automatically sent out and I feel that I should draw attention to the fact that this is an ever evolving discussion.  Second, I am super busy and want to have a new post of sorts when I am unable to be producing anything significant this week.

I am planning on a follow up to this discussion that tries to root out how people see transparency.  It appears that differing opinions on definition, use, what is appropriate and other things are at the core of this discussion.  I want to try to define arguments from both sides and then open it up to the opinion of others.

Transparencygate!

There has been a developing discussion and debate centering around the transparency of organizations in Georgia who receive USAID grant money.  It has been very interesting, but a lot to soak in with so many posts on so many blogs.  So, I want to try to post a condensed form of the discussion for anyone who wants to make it a quick read or play catch up.  Of course, I will link to the full posts and encourage everyone to actually read each post as I will just be summarizing and picking out a few quotes.

Please point out anything I may have missed or misstated as there is a lot and I want to reduce it as much as I can without missing the arguments made by each post.  I will update as I find more posts and more responses come in. 

Updates:
Aug 26 - Lova Rakotomalala post
Aug 27 - Counterpart Int'l response
Aug 28 - TI Georgia supports Bruckner
Aug 28 - TI comments
Sept 1 - CARE comments

The Conversation Continues…

and keeps getting better.
A new post at Staying for Tea looks at the debate that arose around 1 Million Shirts and the Hughes family and goes further to provoke a better form of discourse in aid blogging.  Aaron hits it out of the park arguing to be a moderate elitist.  Here are some of the best sections:

2,000 Hits and 83 Comments Later…

I am learning a lot from the MetaFilter beating I took over the past two days.  There are some interesting and constructive comments that have and will lead to some learning on my part.  So, I am going to try to show some of the comments here that were posted on MetaFilter and show what I have learned. (In going through them the post deviated a bit as I wrote a few reactions, pointed out some comments and shared where I made mistakes).

I would encourage anyone else to jump in with ideas in the comment section here.

Because They Should Be Honored

Ok I am a little late.

But, even when critical of some things, humanitarians who sacrifice in ways beyond what I can personally understand should be celebrated and thanked.

Though belated, a big thanks to those who commit their lives to the humanitarian endeavor.

Stirring the Pot

This post showed up on MetaFilter Yesterday:

If You Can't Buy 700 Bicycles, Don't Buy Any
August 22, 2010 10:27 AM

The Hughes family does a good deed and gets beaten up by some in the international development community, reigniting the debate on poverty tourism.(previously)
posted by Xurando (79 comments total)

If you check out the links, you will see that they lead back to one of my posts, one from Tales From the Hood and a collection of poverty tourism posts at Good Intentions are Not Enough.  I really holding back commentary for the moment.  I love criticisms, but the stream of comments become quite hateful and defensive almost immediately.  I am glad to spark conversations, it is my goal to do so, but this is not what I had hoped for.  The back and forth I had with Jina Moore is a bit more of what I was hoping for.
On the positive side, never having gone much above 100 or so page views, I had 1,334 yesterday.  I exceeded the previous month’s page views, ~1,000, in a day.

There is No Such Thing as Normal

The debate over poverty tourism and this post from Tales From the Hood have caused me to reflect more on the idea of what is normal.  The natural place to start is the dictionary. 

Normal is defined by Merriam Webster is, “2 a : according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle b :conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern.”  There are other uses for the term, but that is the only one applicable to considering living standards and expectations in development.

Smart Aid at South by Southwest

The Smart Aid Initiative has submitted a panel idea to South by Southwest (SXSW) for their 2011 Interactive session. Our idea made the first cut and is now out for public vote. If you’re interested in seeing this topic make it to SXSW please take a minute and vote for it on the panel picker. Here’s a summary of our proposed panel:

Radiolab and NPR Present Words

This is a complete change of what is usual, but I have to post this because I am beyond enamored by this video. Put together by Radiolab and NPR, this video strings together words through imagery. It is the type of narrative that I enjoy most. To me, this is brilliant.

A Taxonomy of Poverty Tourism and What is the Best Form

Aaron at Staying for Tea puts together the following taxonomy for poverty tourism:

He then goes on to explain all of his classifications that I encourage everyone to go read over at the original post: http://ow.ly/2rm6b .  I could have put it here, but I think that he deserves the traffic for all the effort put into piecing it together.