Global Perspectives

My memories of Dan - who died aged 38 on 6th Oct 2013 'Don't be so ridiculous, Mark' were some of the words I would most commonly hear being nearly spat from Dan's mouth. It was usually in response to a preposterous idea or an all too obvious ruse.  Dan could be endearingly credulous.  You could spin him a yarn and he would nod along until he would come to his senses and shake off his natural preference to accept people and ideas at face value.   I had a recurring joke with dan that despite his fulsome facial hair and my hair free baby face, that I in fact had more stubble than him when he was my age.  This line was stretching it when he was 18 but was clearly ludicrous when he was 38! Instead of casually dismissing me, he would launch into a thoroughly unnecessary defence that he was the Esau of the family and i was patently the Jacob. It always ended in him telling me how ridiculous I was.... I will really miss that flailing fist in my direction.   Dan d...

I have signed up to run the Paris Marathon in April with a target of raising £1000. As the Head of Fundraising for VSO, I of all people should have no problems in raising the cash – right? As Greg Wallace would say, ‘jobs don’t get easier than this.’ Well, I don’t mind admitting it but I don’t find fundraising easy. At first I thought I’d make the fundraising job simpler if I upped the stakes in the challenge itself. So, I have publicly declared my goal to run the marathon in under three hours. A part of me hoped that by making a big claim, I could just sit back watch the money flow in. Like running a marathon, I knew it took more work than that. So I have set about doing the basics; set up my just giving page, breaking down the target to manageable chunks, found a good case study, emailed friends and family and posted links on facebook. For more ideas see our Fundraising page . That has got me most of the way. I have now raised £700 towards my target. But really good fundr...

Our view from the summit of the Rwenzori mountain range in Western Uganda was breathtaking. A young Ugandan entrepreneur, Vincent Biyara, had been our guide as we struggled to the top. It was from here that he described the development he wanted to see in the Karagutu valley that tumbled before us. It was a vision of enterprise: a community able to utilise its natural assets to establish agricultural and tourist businesses that would create jobs and enable the community to prosper. There is now widespread recognition in the development community that poverty cannot be defeated without stimulating enterprise and achieving inclusive economic growth. This is especially important when you consider that six out of the top 10 fastest growing economies are in Africa: Uganda, for example, is one of the fastest growing non-oil producing countries in the world. Growth alone is not enough; it must be harnessed to ensure the resulting job creation, development of management capacity and the...