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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Work that Matters


As most of you know, I work for an international development consulting firm. Huh, you ask? No worries...I get that response all the time and it's completely natural and valid.
I'm sure if I said Save the Children most of you would know the sort of work they do around the world. Their name pretty much says it all. However, it's hard to grasp the notion that there are development actors out there also doing much life-saving to reintegrate child soldiers, for instance, or help establish citizen groups to fight for human rights. The NGOs do a much better job of getting their messages out and truly marketing through powerful methods, including celebrity endorsements and ad campaigns. Take the Rewrite the Futures campaign which I stumbled across today on YouTube -- it's so very poignant and real.

Admittedly, outside of the non-profit sphere, we've been much less inclined to put our face out there; while the NGOs need to do it to survive financially. But as more and more assaults are taking place against those of us doing good work around the world (we're the "bad" contractors, mind you), we've got to be much more outspoken.

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