Tomorrow is World Toilet Day and here, Katie Whitehouse looks at how building a toilet isn’t the end of the story and we need sustainable approaches to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). Building a toilet and marking it as a metric achieved is relatively easy. Building a toilet and ensuring that it is continuously serviced and the waste collected transported …
Wanted! MEL specialist on fragile and conflict affected contexts
Marta Arranz reflects over the role of monitoring and evaluation in fragility and conflict programming and talks about a new exciting role in Oxfam GB. onitoring, evaluation and learning is a vital part of Oxfam’s work in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. We’re looking for a creative, experienced technical specialist to push our thinking and practice on monitoring Evaluation and Learning …
Responding to our toilet duties: An important subject!
Sanitation in emergency contexts must consider a diverse range of social, environmental, cultural and economic parameters. Jenny Lamb explores what this means for Oxfam and for Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) practitioners more broadly. From the Haiti earthquake in Port-au-Prince to the refugee crisis in Ethiopia and the displacement of communities in South Sudan every new situation presents us with challenges. …
The gap widens between the UKs national living wage and the real living wage
It is ever more clear that employment is not an automatic route out of poverty in the UK. In this blog, Amy Hill outlines the difference between the national living wage and the real living wage and explains how Oxfam GB is committed to ‘decent’ work for a decent standard of living. igher minimum rates of pay were recently announced …
The impatient optimist: Urine-tricity to light humanitarian camps
In this blog we’re introduced to two sides of the ‘Urine-tricity’ story. Firstly, we hear from Oxfam’s Head of Water and Sanitation Andy Bastable, who shares his eager observations on the project, which produces electrical power from urine. To conclude, Ioannis Ieropoulos, Professor of Bioenergy and Self-sustainable Systems at University of the West of England, maps out the history of the research …
Evaluation for strategic learning and adaptive management in practice
Kimberly Bowman summarises some of the discussion and insight from a session on evaluation for adaptive management at the recent European Evaluation Society conference. ‘Adaptive programming’ (a.k.a. adaptive management, adaptive aid) is a hot topic, explored in a number of insightful reports, blog posts, learning initiatives and even manifestos. Many of us sitting in internal monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) …
Understanding the position of women in the UK labour market
Graham Whitham, Senior Policy Advisor on UK Poverty and Inequality, introduces to some of the key findings of the recent report, Women, work and wages and the UK. he labour market position of women in the UK has been generally improving, with higher employment rates and increases in earnings. However, on these measures, women still fare worse in the job …
Showing that we care: Challenging assumptions on unpaid care
Nikki van der Gaag, Director of Gender Justice and Women’s Rights at Oxfam, introduces us to the issue of unpaid care work and the impact that this has on women’s lives and women’s economic empowerment. here isn’t a woman in the world who doesn’t struggle to balance unpaid care and household work with her other responsibilities, including paid work. Which …
From coffee to conference
In this blog, Shekhar Anand and Emilia Torrisi share Oxfam’s learning on building influencing networks, how we are achieving it and why it is crucial to creating sustainable change. t Oxfam we know how crucial is to work with and influence others to enable changes in the life of poor and vulnerable communities. By bringing people together to find common solutions …
From the ground up: How Yemen’s women and girls survive
This blog introduces a study carried out by Oxfam, CARE and GenCap, to better understand how women, men, girls and boys survive in Yemen, a country torn apart by conflict. s Dubai and Saudi Arabia vie with each other to build the world’s tallest tower at an estimated cost of over $1 billion, Yemeni women and girls struggle to survive amidst …