The helicopter banks down steeply to the left, and we’re approaching Akobo town; the miles of flat scrub land and acacia trees have given way to a scattering of huts and one-story, corrugated iron-roofed brick buildings. We hover over a …
May for me, as Head of DFID Kenya, was a month of stark opposites. Highs and lows, achievements and failings, celebrations and disappointments. To explain, the government of Kenya released a report called a 'A Price Too High to Bear', …
Not long after I arrived in Bangladesh, something very mundane happened to me that just happened to shatter my perspective. I was walking home, holding onto the remains of my lunch and naively expecting to encounter a rubbish bin along …
BBC6 Music DJ and broadcaster Lauren Laverne joined thousands in DFID's successful social media "Thunderclap" earlier this month, culminating in a message of zero tolerance to female genital mutilation (FGM) message being sent out to millions of accounts. Around 1200 people …
In January, I always enjoy reading the Economist's World In Year X publication – which sets out their forecasts for big headlines under a number of categories. What I particularly like is their review of how correct their forecasts were …
In August I met Lynne Featherstone and she told me about the work DFID is doing to raise the profile of disability rights in international development. Back in 2000 the UN’s Millennium Development Goals set out how they were going …
It was the images of utter devastation and destruction in Tacloban which put Typhoon Haiyan at the top of the news stories in the UK. A giant cargo ship hurled like a match box by the ferocious force of the …
DFID Kenya had the pleasure of welcoming celebrity Millie Banks to her new home in Nairobi recently. For those of you for whom tales of Millie’s celebrity status hasn’t yet reached – and there can't be many left – Millie …
The storm surge from Typhoon Haiyan completely washed away all of the houses facing onto the beach in Tanza – when we visited 12 days after, all that was left were a few concrete foundations, and haphazard piles of rubble, …
I went to Syria in December 2012, invited by UK based NGO Hand in Hand for Syria. My first view of Atmeh refugee camp, close to the Turkish border, was of a vast sea of muddy white tents. Three days …
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