Posted on Friday, 16th March 2012 by chris wignall

Last December I retweeted CBC host Jian Ghomeshi: Lots of other people retweeted it, which makes sense because it represents what has become common understanding in the development field. There are lots of reports supporting the idea that aid given to women results in benefits to their family and community, while aid given to men [...]

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Posted on Friday, 23rd September 2011 by chris wignall

Hope is the greatest weapon of all. So reads the tagline for the new movie Machine Gun Preacher starring Gerard Butler in the title role portraying the compelling Sam Childers, a former violent criminal who became a missionary in Sudan running an orphanage, and has claimed to have engaged in a paramilitary campaign to rescue [...]

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Posted on Thursday, 15th September 2011 by chris wignall

Earlier this week the Toronto Star reported that former US President George W. Bush would be speaking at an invitation only breakfast for donors to Tyndale University, one of Canada’s most prominent Christian post-secondary schools and probably North America’s most diverse. Not surprisingly, this generated some strong responses. Yesterday Tyndale announced that the event has [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 9th August 2011 by chris wignall

As I’ve been becoming more educated in the field of global relief and development I’ve started to form some reasonably strong opinions. The strongest is that I don’t know enough to support my strong opinions. I have become convinced by reading, site visits, and conversations with trusted, experienced professionals that effective long term improvement in [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 19th July 2011 by chris wignall

Two weeks ago I spent a few hours in a garbage dump outside the city of Sosua in the Dominican Republic helping illegal Haitian immigrants scavenge for recyclables, and food. I was there leading a group of young people who have been recipients of the Catalyst Award. Having been chosen for their demonstrated commitment to [...]

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Posted on Thursday, 23rd December 2010 by chris wignall

This is a time of year when rituals, traditions, and symbols are everywhere. Some represent family, others are seasonal or sacred. In fact, a lot of the things I do that make it feel like Christmas are meaningful in ways I can’t easily explain. Defining why it seems so wrong that my parents bought an [...]

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Posted on Thursday, 18th November 2010 by chris wignall

For the last couple decades there has been a growing excitement in development fields about the promise of microfinance as a key tool in reducing the impacts of extreme poverty in a sustainable manner. As the industry has grown from the pioneering work of Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank and the outstanding results [...]

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Posted on Wednesday, 28th July 2010 by chris wignall

Earlier this summer my 6 year old refused to take part in a large family picture at a reunion. Regardless of how we asked, encouraged, or mildly threatened him he just wouldn’t sit down with all the cousins and more distant relatives and smile for a few seconds. Until Grandpa offered him $2 to do [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 15th June 2010 by chris wignall

This morning the results of the Stronger Together 2010 collaborative granting project were released (Complete list of grantees here.) Having invested a significant part of the past ten months in the process it is a satisfying thing to be able to notify the successful applicants (selected from a total field of 131) and anticipate the [...]

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Posted on Wednesday, 9th June 2010 by chris wignall

Sometimes opportunity knocks, sometimes it seeps through the basement walls. When recent rains flooded the basement of Stu Taylor’s home outside Winnipeg he didn’t anticipate it leading to positive news coverage for our partner IDE-Canada. To see how personal frustration was turned into national media coverage watch this clip from the CBC or read the [...]

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