Happy 2010, Aid Watchers! New viewers on Jan 4: See Update 2 below.
Since you don’t really expect me to work on a holiday (do you?!), I will just start off the New Year with a link to Owen Barder’s hilarious spoof. Are we in a satirical face-off?
Update 1: Yes we are! Aid Thoughts has responded to Owen’s Universal Cynic with a very funny counter spoof on the Universal Project Advocate.
This update motivates me to correct the inexplicable omission of a link to my original satire “How to write about poor people,” which may have motivated Owen’s counter blast, which in turn motivate Aid Thoughts’ counter-counter-blast. Plus for good measure, Aid Watch readers’ additional 15 pointers (through my editorial filter) on writing on poor people.
Any other related blogs that want to launch their own missiles of maximum sarcasm? Yes, I mean you Chris Blattman! And of course, we have got to hear from you, Wronging Rights, you’re a natural at this.
New Update 2 (Jan 4): Wronging Rights came through, they are as hilarious as I expected! And it’s their blogiversary, so please go there. Blattman blew me off with some flimsy excuse that he’s giving two presentations at the All-Galactic Social Science Association, currently meeting.
It doesn’t get any better than this, aid watchers. Somehow satire brings deeper insights than yet another aid and growth regression.
3 Comments
Aid Thoughts has already given their satirical response to Owen’s Post http://aidthoughts.org/?p=843
Oh what great fun, these satires!
I cackled in delight
The bluster of the aid world
Shredded, set alight.
I danced around the bonfire
I howled with mock dismay
Like some authentic tribesman
On under $1.25 a day.
But as the embers faded
I felt a little queasy
We’d pricked a little effigy
It seemed a bit too easy
Satire wars- Why university professors won’t let aid projects work
I believe that major universities are not providing the proper training or reference materials to students and social entrepreneurs who with to be effective in helping BOP personnel. For example, many of the world’s poorest people are subsistence farmers living on less than two acres of land. To help these people, social entrepreneurs should be very familiar with the following fields of study with emphasis on arid and tropical agriculture:
• Improving grain production
• Improving production of vegetables
• Improving fruit orchards and fruit nurseries
• Improving poultry production
• Improving small animal production such as goats and pigs
• Improving general purpose micro-farms
In urban areas, many of the poorest people are essentially migrant workers who are willing to go anywhere and do anything for a job: To help these people, social entrepreneurs should be very familiar with the following fields of study:
• Business process reengineering of small and micro businesses to make these business profitable (this is a field created by industry and is full of “industrial secrets”; university and Government personnel generally don’t know what industry does to make themselves profitable)
• Methods for creating jobs for people who currently earn $1-2/day including single mothers
• Development and maintenance of supply chains (How are you going to distribute 10,000 micro irrigation systems, fertilizer, and other supplies in Kenya without losing money? What high value food commodities are you going to grow in Kenya so that people will double their income each year? How are you going to repeat the UN FAO West Bengal India backyard poultry success in Kenya? (see “A Backyard Poultry Value Chain Increases Assets, Income and Nutrition” which can be found at http://sapplpp.org/goodpractices/small-holder-poultry/resolveuid/91b5e80af8e97248aff0138f168d083a
The proper textbooks and reference material are not being provided on subjects that can help BOP personnel. Instead, there are thousands of textbooks on “policy studies” that may be suitable for NGO fundraising but little else. I prefer to call these “policy studies” texts “political propaganda studies” due to their limited value to people working in the field.