Impact

Our Impact 2025 Workshop participants tackling media literacy and disinformation at the Worldwise Global Schools teacher conference in Castletown, Co. Laois (30th Jan 2025) From collaborative exhibitions and programme engagement to the development of resources, here’s a snapshot of developmenteducation.ie’s impact in 2025 The number of people directly engaged in

Aids-related deaths ‘down 21% from peak’, says UNAIDS

Aids-related deaths are at the lowest level since their 2005 peak, down 21%, figures from UNAIDS suggest. The data also show that while the number of new infections has hovered around 2.7 million people globally every year since 2007, it is falling in 33 countries  — 22 of them in

Don’t let tsunami wash out the MDGs

BANGKOK, Jan 18 (IPS) – Although small, Singapore’s response to aid fellow South-east Asian neighbour Indonesia in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami is being hailed by a regional development expert as a pivotal step in the global race to rid the world of poverty. “Singapore going to Aceh to

Infographic: Ten ways to stop wasting water

Link to full size Every Drop Counts infographic (2011) When was the last time you counted every drop of water you use on an average day? The infographic workshop factory over at GOOD Magazine have done it again.

Who we’re watching for London 2012

Everyone has their favourites they tune in for during the Olympics, whether it’s the Olympic giants such as the infamous Usain Bolt, the immense Michael Phelps or their own national hero. However, as Ros Wynne-Jones of The Guardian puts it: ‘All competitors are, by definition, Olympian, but there are those

School Immersion: Vacation or Education?

“I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.” – Confucius, Chinese philosopher and political theorist, 551-479 BC Immersion programmes are growing in popularity, with many Irish schools engaging and as the word spreads of successful trips many more are expressing interest. There are many questions surrounding

Blood Wood

 “Without forest we would have no access to clean water as the source of life …Forest is like the skin covering our body.” Chut Wutty  1964-2012 When the issue of ‘Blood Wood’ in Cambodia recently came to my attention, I was brought back to the time in 2008 at the

Top 10 facts about the Fairtrade movement in Ireland

Photo: World Fairtrade Day by John Sargent. Flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Anyone who buys, sells or stocks goods that have achieved Fairtrade certification are not engaging in a ‘simple’ or ‘neutral’ act. Quite to the contrary, it is ENTIRELY political. Fairtrade Ireland, founded as the Irish Fair Trade Network (IFTN), in

Naming the Unnameable: Poetry and the Refugee Crisis

The experiences of people seeking refuge are near impossible to understand for those of us whose lives have never been disrupted by conflict.  Who do we turn to then, to make sense of such suffering?  Salman Rushdie suggests that it is, “A poet’s work … to name the unnameable,” and

Development Travel Guide: Reflections on global development issues through my travels

Ellen Brennan’s  blog was a runner up in the 2015 Trinity College Dublin and developmenteducation.ie Development Issues blog series. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. When I was 5 years old I made my first trip abroad to Nogales, Mexico, only one hour from my home in the US. Up until that point I had

A walk through Zingalume Compound: Lusaka West, Zambia

Zingalume compound is one of the biggest ‘compounds’ (shanty town) located in the western part of Zambia’s capital Lusaka. Zingalume is home to a cross-section of Lusaka society including, civil servants, industry-labourers, marketeers, public bus drivers, retirees among others. An ordinary household in Zingalume compound can consist of between 4 and 10 family members

Heavy lifting: women and water

As ever, there’s good news and bad news.  The good news is that the MDG Goal to increase the population with access to safe drinking water was met in 2012.  But, the bad news is that the focus on ‘safe’ water hides a major issue.  People (here read predominantly women)

Global Citizen Award – Explore. Share. Inspire.

The Global Citizen Award is a personal development award that enables returned volunteers to share their overseas experiences and continue to make a difference to global justice issues at home

Letter from Lesbos

During the month of August I volunteered with an organisation based on the island of Lesbos which gives legal advice to people seeking refugee status. Many refugees find their way to the island due to its proximity to mainland Turkey which you can see from the beach, about 8km from

Responses to the pandemic

Below are responses to the HIV and AIDS pandemic from: Civil Society The Zambian Government A traditional leader, Chieftainess Mwenda Irish Aid Civil Society in Zambia: A Response The view of Women for Change on the pandemic The fight against HIV and AIDS can only be undertaken successfully when there

COVID-19 and Human Development

Data and debate. An initial reflection from Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy: ‘Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch

Turning idle textbooks into learning gains in fragile states

This article explores a study conducted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), focusing on whether allowing students to take textbooks home can improve learning outcomes in highly resource-constrained environments. The research, carried out in 90 primary schools in South Kivu, a region affected by local conflict, tested a

Exploring The Shape of Our World Today

This module explores the basic shape of our world today: it highlights a range of key issues and challenges, how we see them and how others see them; it also explores key debates

The Poor Against the Powerful

Here’s a short article I wrote on ‘food dumping’ that is cross-posted from Eco-Age, an online UK magazine which covers a wide range of areas including ecological analysis, socially responsible shopping and sustainable fashion. It looks at how food aid doesn’t always do what it is supposed to, with often

Infographic: What’s wrong with our food system?

Another brilliant infographic has gone online from GOOD Magazine, this time in partnership with Oxfam Australia and directed at the global food system. Consumption is a reoccurring theme for us (and on this blog!) as it relates to what we consume, how it is produced, who produces it and the

22 students challenge ‘poverty porn’ story in Times of Malta

When writing about Africa we are told: Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She