In the run-up to World Humanitarian Day this week, Isabelle Tallec looks at Oxfam’s locally led response to the Ukraine crisis, working with dozens of local and community organisations to support the most marginalised groups of refugees and displaced people.
There’s magic in letting people tell their own stories
International media and aid agencies have too often taken people’s voices and used them to promote their own agendas. This has to change, writes Misozi Tembo.
Compliance for INGO partners is riddled with colonial attitudes: here’s how that can change…
As international NGOs, we need to stop assuming partners are risky, respect local standards, accept we should prove ourselves as much as partners do, and slash the form-filling, says Oxfam compliance advisor Dominic Vickers. In fact, how about encouraging partners to apply for funds by video?
Words matter: that’s why Oxfam is launching an inclusive language guide
What do you think of the term “developing countries”? Ever felt uncomfortable saying “beneficiaries”? Helen Wishart introduces Oxfam’s new inclusive language guide and sets out why it’s time for all of us in NGOs to consider the power in the words that we use…
INGOs must share data and power with local partners – but that doesn’t mean dumping privacy risks onto them
In the future, more smaller, local aid organisations will be involved in collecting data – but their international partners must not forget they still have important ethical and legal duties when it comes to privacy, says Lori Roussey
As Oxfam turns 80, here are three big ideas that I think will shape its future…
Eight decades after Oxfam began with a meeting in an Oxford church, we must respond to challenges our founders could not have dreamed of, from re-imagining what an international NGO should be, to the need for totally new sources of funding, to the world-changing impact of technology, says Oxfam GB CEO Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah
The high price of lowballing local organisations
There’s a glaring missing piece in the funding of humanitarian organisations like ours, says Hero Anwar: the overheads and indirect costs essential to our survival
Locked out. What do local leaders say about reforming the humanitarian system?
Amy Croome reports back on a very different kind of discussion on shifting power and resources – one led by local activists and organisations
From a Rohingya refugee’s perspective, who is local – and why does it matter?
Interactions between refugee women and aid workers with little connection to Rohingya culture can go terribly wrong, says Razia Sultana of Oxfam partner RW Welfare Society. To win women’s trust, INGOs need to engage with whoever is ‘as local as possible’