Siobhan McDonough, Writer
Linking from the IDinsight blog. By Siobhan McDonough, heather lanthorn, Kondwani-yobe Mumba, and Kevin Kelsey This post explores how IDinsight addressed the tendency of program staff to want their most successful participants surveyed. Introduction It can be a huge challenge identifying survey respondents in sparsely populated regions with limited information about where people live. This is especially the…
Author note: Hi everyone! I will now be reposting/linking my actual development writing for my organization for those interested. By Siobhan McDonough, Lilian Lehmann, and Jeffery McManus Since 2015, IDinsight has engaged governments and NGOs in embedded learning partnerships: we provide data-driven advisory services on clients’ most pressing questions in real-time. These long-term partnerships allow flexibility and…
I spent my Tuesday morning disinfecting my closets from a termite treatment. It was an out-of-body experience, because, like a good development worker, I haven’t done manual labour in a very long time. Sure, I cook and wash dishes and my clothes, but for the past year and a half, and before that, four years…
This guest post is by my friend Steven Brownstone who recently moved from Zambia after living here for two years. Editor’s note: I hope to bring different viewpoints about Zambia to this blog over the coming months. The views expressed in the following piece are the views of the author, and not necessarily mine. I…
The week is almost over! Here are some interesting things I’ve read recently about women and development (thanks to my friends and colleagues for finding them and letting me share). Cover photo of me, a woman, since I don’t like taking photos of random women (or anyone)… The transformative power of giving young women cash…
(Longish note: I struggle with whether to include content warnings on my development posts. This post is largely about gun violence, including suicide. Suicide is something that can make me upset if I came across it unawares, so it’s something my instinctive reaction is to warn about. But for other people, other types of unpleasant…
Rich people in rich countries cannot avoid caring about domestic poverty. In my home country, the United States, people probably don’t care enough about domestic poverty (if we did, millions of people wouldn’t still be living under the poverty line). But most Americans do care (or feel they should care) about domestic poverty. In the…
If you were thinking about getting me some ginger tea for my birthday (happy birthday to me!) but suddenly realized you can’t mail it to Zambia, donate that $5 to one of Givewell’s top charities.* This relates to the topic of this post, so if that seems intriguing, read on. I’ll put a disclaimer that…
This has been on my computer for a long while now, but as my views have not changed in the past few months, there’s no time like the present to publish. I said in one of my first posts that I hadn’t gotten much in the way of gendered street harassment because I’m Chinese. This…