Building Business Through Trust in Africa

By Blair Glencorse. Originally published on the GE Ideas Lab Blog. Blair Glencorse, Founder and Executive Director, The Accountability Lab, USA; Global Agenda Council on Transparency & Anti-Corruption at the World Economic Forum on Africa 2015 in Cape Town. Copyright by World Economic Forum / Jakob Polacsek There is no doubt that Africa’s success deserves to be recognized and celebrated. At the recent World Economic Forum on Africa, much was made of Africa’s clear and well-documented progress. FDI in the continent has more than tripled in the past 15 years for example, while GDP is expected to rise by over [...]

2015-06-22T00:00:00+00:0022nd June 2015|

Shaking Up the Status Quo in Nepal

Shaking Up the Status Quo in Nepal By BLAIR GLENCORSE and SUJEEV SHAKYA. Originally Published in the New York Times.   “Ke garne?” an old lady said to us, tears pouring down her cheeks, as we visited her earthquake-battered village in the Dhading district of Nepal last month: “What to do?” With a history of repeated crises — political, economic and natural — it has become the Nepali way to shrug one’s shoulders and hope for the best. Sadly, people have been hoping for a long time: even before the earthquakes, Nepal was one of the poorest, most corrupt and least [...]

2015-06-01T00:00:00+00:001st June 2015|

5 Things We Learned at the Global Innovation Competition 2015

By: Narayan Adhikari, South Asia Representative, and Fayyaz Yaseen, Pakistan Ambassador, for the Accountability Lab. Last month, Narayan and Fayyaz took part in the finals of the Global Innovation Competition (GIC) 2015. In this blog, originally published by Making All Voices Count, they reflect on the GIC process, the people they met, and the lessons learned.  Narayan Adhikari and Fayyaz Yaseen from Accountability Lab Hundreds of individuals and organisations from around the world applied to Making All Voices Count’s Global Innovation Competition, and we were thrilled to be one of the ten selected finalists to take part in the week long mentorship and pitching programme in [...]

2015-05-04T00:00:00+00:004th May 2015|

Can filmmaking help achieve development goals?

Blair Glencorse of the Accountability Lab discusses the importance of community-driven development and how filmmaking can engage people in accountability goals. Many organizations and development professionals have found that reaching initial benchmarks is sometimes easier than sustaining them. However, with clear goals, development progress can be sustained in the long-run. According to Blair Glencorse of the Accountability Lab, setting goals that are context-specific is critical. The Accountability Lab, he says, meets “people where they are, not where we want them to be,” and takes into consideration the varying levels of literacy, numeracy, and other practical skills of their clients when designing a program. [...]

2015-04-15T00:00:00+00:0015th April 2015|

Fighting Corruption by Localizing Aid

This article was originally published by "The Hill." By Gregory Adams  America is the most generous country in the world.  We do this for a lot of reasons.  Helping other countries helps strengthen our own security, and our own prosperity.  But most importantly, America gives aid to fight poverty because it is the right thing to do.But Americans often ask ourselves, "is any of this aid making a difference?" How do we make sure our aid gets to the people who need it?  How do we make sure it leads to real change? How do we make sure it's not [...]

2015-03-30T00:00:00+00:0030th March 2015|

Why Cameras Are Not Enough

By: Nora Rahimian. When Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed 18-year-old, unarmed, Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was not indicted (indict: formally accuse of or charge with a serious crime; not try in a courtroom with jurors, but simply accuse), people got angry. Despite eyewitness testimonies that said Brown was not acting aggressively and had his hands up when he was shot, the case ultimately became a s/he said-s/he said of the police versus the people.Without physical proof of Wilson’s aggressive attack (or Brown’s peaceful compliance, depending on which narrative you support), the state ultimately sided with itself [...]

2015-01-22T00:00:00+00:0022nd January 2015|

Shaking Up Aid Donors Five Years After the Haiti Earthquake

This article was originally published by the Miami Herald. By Blair Glencorse and Anne Sophie Ranjbar Five years ago today - on January 12th, 2010- Port-au-Prince crumbled to the ground in one of the worst natural disasters of recent times. Over 200,000 were killed in the earthquake, with another 300,000 injured. Entire neighborhoods were raised. As many as 2.3 million people- the equivalent of half the population of the Miami metro area- were displaced from their homes. More than 50 percent of all government, administrative and economic infrastructure was destroyed. Haiti lay in ruins. The earthquake generated a huge outpouring [...]

2015-01-09T00:00:00+00:009th January 2015|

The Ebola Opportunity

This article was originally published by Global Policy Journal. By Blair Glencorse and Ashoka Mukpo “A few weeks ago there were plenty of cases” says Mohammed, a trader from a bustling market neighborhood of Monrovia, “but now Ebola- it has dropped”. In Liberia, the country hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak, there are now hopeful signs that the virus is being brought under some level of control. The latest World Health Organization situation report indicates that the number of new cases has stabilized. NPR wrote last month that there were just 8 Ebola cases in Liberia’s biggest treatment center. This [...]

2015-01-06T00:00:00+00:006th January 2015|

Knowmore LIB: Building Resilience and Defeating Ebola through Civic Education

This post was originally published by OpenIDEO. By Brooks Marmon The “Knowmore LIB” project aims to sensitize all Liberians on the dangers of the Ebola virus, practices to avoid and contain the disease, and to increase the trust of Liberian citizens in their government. The campaign uses innovative tools to help Liberians engage with policymakers and public health officials. The campaign will deploy chalk billboards around major cities and automated question boxes that allow citizens to ask questions about the Ebola virus; an Ebola awareness mural campaign; short films on Ebola through the students of an accountability film school; comic [...]

2014-10-10T00:00:00+00:0010th October 2014|

Design Thinking for Accountability

By: Blair Glencorse. This article was originally published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. A new community justice system in Liberia emerges from a design-thinking approach. Last year, in the West Point township of Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia, an enterprising community leader named Thomas Tweh found himself with a serious problem. West Point crams more than 75,000 citizens into a square mile patch of land by the Atlantic Ocean—and life is very hard. Space is limited, incomes are low, formal jobs are few, and basic services are almost non-existent. The issue Tweh faced was central to the causes [...]

2014-04-28T00:00:00+00:0028th April 2014|
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