As we launch our WASH Impact Series, Oxfam’s Quality Assurance Project Manager, James Brown introduces a new global initiative to help organisations focus on achieving quality in humanitarian WASH responses. What would a quality assurance system for humanitarian WASH programming look like? That’s the question being explored by the Quality Assurance and Accountability Project, a Global WASH Cluster initiative led …
Solar study lamps in Sierra Leone
Renewable Energy Policy Advisor, Kevin Johnstone, outlines some of the educational benefits of solar study lamp campaigns, and their potential to achieve much more. The cost of night studies Sometimes Bintu’s family couldn’t afford batteries for home lighting, and on those nights, she couldn’t complete her school work. Bintu’s mother explained that if “you don’t have batteries, your children will …
Fairer procurement: The equitable business tool
Today, Oxfam launches a new procurement tool to help buying teams source products from fairer businesses. Alex Maitland, who developed the tool, describes the unique approach we have taken, and looks to its potential for reducing inequality in global supply chains. Growing inequality in global supply chains is a barrier to a decent standard of living for many workers and …
Inequality, Intersectionality and Innovation: Our 2018
Susanna Griffiths, Digital Content Editor for Views & Voices, takes a look back at our most popular content in 2018 and reflects. The number of people living in extreme poverty has more than halved in a decade. But overcoming poverty isn’t just about addressing material needs, it is about equal access to opportunities; dignity and self-esteem, and shared prosperity. Tackling …
Can selling water and sanitation services to people living in poverty be inclusive and equitable?
Tom Wildman, Oxfam GB’s Senior Advisor on WASH Market Development, outlines the debate that took place at this year’s Water & Health Conference, and summarises the key areas where differing perspectives came together. Market-based approaches to water and sanitation have grown in their scale and scope within the past decade, reflecting two glaring realities: those providing water and sanitation services …
Standing up for women’s rights and local leadership in Uganda
Elizabeth Stevens describes how a small, local NGO has had an outsized impact on Uganda’s refugee response. Heart, guts, big ideas, and an investor. If you are launching a tiny women’s organization into the rough-and-tumble world of humanitarian response, you had better have all four. That’s what I concluded from my time with African Women and Youth Action for Development …
Motivating people to take action: towards an Asian narrative on tax justice and financial transparency
Amy Croome, from Oxfam GB, interviews fellow researchers, and civil society actors, on approaches, challenges, and opportunities to tax justice in Asia. For two days academics, activists and civil society actors came together in Delhi to discuss tax justice, illicit financial flows and tax havens in Asia. A key theme was the important role of narratives in motivating people to …
Making change happen
Oxfam GB’s Head of Publishing, Emily Gillingham, explains why and how we developed a free, online course for changemakers, and what the early results show. “I’m hoping this course will help me focus my objectives a bit more and discover what small but important steps I can take towards promoting change, changing minds and minding our community.” This comment from …
Young feminists driving change
Imogen Davies, Oxfam GB’s Global Adviser on Youth, Gender & Active Citizenship, and co-editor of the latest issue of Gender & Development, describes the political approaches young feminist movements are taking to reshape the international development landscape. There are more young people alive today than there ever have been before. Almost one person in four is aged 10-24, with 90 per …