Powerful Citizen Media to Champion Responsible Governments

By: Karolle Rabarison. This blog post was originally published by Media Rise. Interview produced by Katie Gach. I recently sat down with Blair Glencorse, Executive Director of Accountability Lab. The Lab “catalyzes a new generation of active citizens and responsible leaders around the world.” As part of this year’s Media Rise festival, Blair will lead a workshop on media’s role in promoting civic engagement, happening at the OpenGov Hub on September 29, 2015 (register). Media Rise: Last year, Accountability Lab was the Media Rise Pitch Night People’s Choice Award. That contributed to the film school in Liberia where students are making films to [...]

2015-09-28T00:00:00+00:0028th September 2015|

Nepal Mobile Citizen Helpdesks August Update

The Mobile Citizen Helpdesks (#quakehelpdesk) are coordinated groups of volunteers who are closing information gaps and building feedback loops in the worst-affected areas of post-earthquake Nepal. The Accountability Lab and Local Interventions Group launched the Helpdesks within 24 hours of the first earthquake on April 25th. Our volunteers immediately began meeting with citizens to gather information, assess needs, and help them solve difficult problems related to the earthquake. In this way they solved hundreds of problems for citizens across the country–from helping those who could not write fill in the relevant forms to access relief, to working with political parties to make sure aid [...]

2015-08-11T00:00:00+00:0011th August 2015|

Validating Liberia’s Open Government Partnership National Action Plan

By: Meghan Schneider, Accountability Lab Liberia Summer Design Resident. This blog post was originally published by Open Government Partnership. On June 12, 2015 the Republic of Liberia convened a Stakeholders’ Interactive Forum to Validate the Open Government Partnership Action Plan at the Ministry of Information (MICAT). Participants included members of the OGP Steering Committee who came from various counties, as well as representatives from various civil society organizations and government ministries. The Honorable Andrew G. Temeh, Deputy Minister of Administration at MICAT and the OGP Focal Person, gave an overview of the OGP’s 2015-2016 Action Plan. After the overview, participants were [...]

2015-07-13T00:00:00+00:0013th July 2015|

Building the Next Generation of Responsible Athletes in Liberia

By: Sam Burnette III, who hails from a family of prominent Liberian footballers and is the Founder and CEO of the Liberia Football Foundation. This blog post was originally published by the Huffington Post. Building the Next Generation of Responsible Athletes in Liberia The concept of Sports for Development (S4D) is gaining prominence across the world, especially in developing countries. When properly implemented, these types of programs are very effective at creating social change and supporting development- especially of children. In Liberia, one of several West African countries devastated by the Ebola virus, there are a handful of organizations that see [...]

2015-07-10T00:00:00+00:0010th July 2015|

Liberia’s Political Accountability Art

Liberia's Political Accountability Art By Brooks Marmon, Accountability Lab in Monrovia, Liberia. Originally published in Okay Africa. (Photo from ‘Accountability Art: Liberia’s Quest for Integrity’ by Jim Tuttle. Click here to see full gallery of artwork.)  An artistic culture is starting to resume in Liberia, with a number of African curio shops lining the road to Robertsfield Airport and Monrovia’s busy Waterside Market. Nonetheless, an exhibition of Liberian art has proven more common in the West than in Monrovia, where the commercial business district has not housed an art gallery since 2012. Accountability Art: Liberia’s Quest for Integrity, on display at the National [...]

2015-07-01T00:00:00+00:001st July 2015|

Accountability Lab Impact in 2014

Here at the Accountability Lab, we take impact very seriously. Each year we carry out impact surveys of our five key stakeholder groups (accountapreneurs, participants, government officials, donors, and peer organizations) to help us gauge how well we're doing and make sure we can learn how to get better. One output is a fun infographic that outlines some of the key results. You can read the full report here, and if you have any questions or comments, join us for our Quarterly Impact Call on March 31st at 9am EST. This year, around the report we're also hosting events at the OpenGov Hub in Washington, DC [...]

2015-03-04T00:00:00+00:004th March 2015|

What Liberia Can Teach The U.S. About Quarantines

By: Jina Moore, BuzzFeed News World Correspondent. This blog post was originally published by BuzzFeed News. They don’t really work. And there are much better, more proven ways to fight Ebola. On a Tuesday evening in late August, Thomas Tweh was part of a team pleading with the Liberian government not to lock down his community. The government was planning to quarantine West Point, an informal neighborhood where Ebola cases were on the rise, and an angry crowd had overrun a newly opened transit center for suspected patients. Tweh and the 20 others negotiating with the government didn’t dispute the need for [...]

2014-10-30T00:00:00+00:0030th October 2014|

The Best Weapon Against Ebola in West Africa Is Winning Public Trust

By: John Tozzi. This article was originally published by Bloomberg Business. The fight against Ebola is taking place on two well-known fronts: on the ground in West Africa, where governments and aid groups are racing to build treatment centers; and inside the lab, where scientists are trying to create vaccines and therapies to halt transmission. A third battleground, harder to track but no less important, focuses on efforts to win trust and change the behavior of the people most at risk of spreading the virus. It’s something many global aid groups were late to. “A huge mistake of the outbreak from [...]

2014-10-30T00:00:00+00:0030th October 2014|

TALEARNing in Jakarta

By: Anne Sophie Ranjbar Last week in Jakarta, the Transparency and Accountability Initiative brought together donors, researchers, INGOs, and CSOs from all over the world to discuss the key questions and challenges in our shared field of transparency and accountability (T/A). As a small organization striving to break tradition in this complex field, we attended the TALEARN conference to learn from others’ experience, share our ideas, and find useful ways to collaborate. Here are my top five take-aways: 1. Think politically. Technical solutions to create transparency are not enough. In order to close feedback loops, we need to figure out what motivates [...]

2014-03-21T00:00:00+00:0021st March 2014|
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