A personal plea: Help me help someone save 'home' for millions

Hello.

I hope you don't mind me reaching out to you like this - I don't do it often, so when I do you know I mean it. I'm writing to ask you to help me make something amazing happen - in about four clicks and two minutes. If I had you at 'hello', then go here: http://bit.ly/voteSMS and vote for FrontlineSMS:Legal, as soon as possible. The site will ask you to enter your e-mail, but that's the only registration required.

If you feel, quite reasonably, that you'd like to know what you're clicking for, then read on...

Each of us interacts with the law all the time - it's a necessary, occasionally painful part of life, something we often have to deal with at the most difficult moments. Yet it's the bedrock on which our societies function, a critical check on power and a means of safe-guarding our rights and resources at every stage of life. Without access to the law, shocks can become crises; assets can disappear overnight; and constitutional rights can be overruled by social norms at the expense of the vulnerable in the community. For so many in the developing world access to justice is next to impossible, thanks to poor infrastructure and stifling bureaucracy.

FrontlineSMS:Legal is a fantastic organisation, setting out to do something completely new, at the boundary of two complex fields - using SMS to extend, improve and coordinate the systems and services that provide justice, and legal services, to hard-to-reach populations who are otherwise unable to access them. Mobile services are proven to improve systems and streamline data management, cost-effectively. I urge you to read more about their mission on their blog. You all know I'm a geek about this stuff - but this is quite literally the sexiest thing to happen to the law in developing countries, like, EVER. I get overcome with excitement just to be allowed to stand next to this project in public and occasionally make it cups of tea. Imagine my happiness to be able to actually help it along - with a few clicks and some light typing. And here's how:

FrontlineSMS:Legal is a semi-finalist in the Ashoka Changemakers competition on Property Rights - the page describing their entry is here. Of 211 applications submitted from 47 countries, they've made it to a round of 19. This round is a popular vote, open to every person/e-mail address interested in taking the time to register. The top 8 or 9 entries will be reviewed by a great panel of judges, including people like Hernando de Soto. Of those 8 or 9, they'll select 3 entries to win $50,000 each. Winning this competition could set FrontlineSMS:Legal on its feet and allow them to develop technology that will enable text messages to feed land registry maps, both on and offline - transforming the accountability of government in this area, one of the most prone to corruption and graft - and protecting the rights of land owners, so that when the unthinkable happens, the one thing people don't lose is home.

I think it's an amazing organisation and a great project, with the potential to make an immeasurable difference. Please please please, click on this link: http://bit.ly/voteSMS and vote for FrontlineSMS:Legal, as soon as possible. The site will ask you to enter your e-mail, but that's the only registration required. Click on the 'like' button or leave a comment and let the world know you were there!

Guys, I'm grateful to you for reading this far. Now go and vote. Let me know you have, and I promise I will make YOU the hot beverage of your choice with my own little hands.

And if I've really sold it to you and you've looked at the links and you believe in it too, then pass it on - tweet, email, Facebook, whatever - get people to click and vote, and we'll make something AWESOME happen.

Happy weekends, and thank you for reading!

Laura

Gypsy and Traveller evictions continue at Hovefields

This from the activist list in support of Dale Farm; sadly evidence of exactly the kinds of evictions which damage health and leave lasting scars.

Everybody is feeling very bruised after the Hovefields eviction and the two instant police evictions under s61 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 around Gardiners Lane, which were done in jackboot fashion without the least mercy.

No attempt was made by the Essex police officers, led by Sgt Gordan acting under orders from Chief Insp.Schofield, to ascertain the circumstances of those he intended to evict, first from a car-park and the second time from a derelict garden where a house is awaiting demolition.

Among those forced to move at short notice - thirty minutes at Gardiners Way - were a pregnant mother, a boy with learning difficulties and a number of small children who had already undergone the trauma of seeing their homes bulldozed at Hovefields.

Meanwhile, further 28-day Notices of eviction may be served at any time on the few people still remaining at Hovefields, and on the 80 families at Dale Farm.

A bitter lesson from Hovefields is that sheer lack of paperwork prevented solicitors intervening to stop the destruction.

Direct action: If you are in Southend this week, please rally outside the County Court on Thursday 16th, when cases to be heard will test whether Basildon has fulfilled its duty under the Housing Act by offering bad-condition flats to Traveller families who have made it clear they cannot tolerate house-dwelling and simply want a place to station the trailer caravans and mobile-homes they own.

In London, cases relating to the Hovefields clearances are coming up in the High Court on 22 and 24 September. Again we are calling upon supporters to demonstrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand on these dates.

Letter to my MP - Gypsies and Travellers

This is not a good time to be a member of the UK's most disenfranchised and misunderstood ethnic minority. In a letter to the Guardian in June 2010, a long list of academics, broadcasters, and a planning official wrote:

Already the government has reversed progressive policies giving incentives for local authorities to develop Gypsy and Traveller sites, by cuts announced in the Housing and Communities Agency budget, cancelling all next year's bids for sites. The Conservatives announced plans to scrap planning and housing circulars which have started to give Gypsies and Travellers a "level playing field" in planning disputes with local authorities and planning inspectors. According to Eric Pickles, they want to revive the "Gypsy law" of criminal trespass. This discriminatory law was derided when Michael Howard campaigned on it in 2005.Detailed research has identified targets for sites for Gypsies and Travellers, and yards for showmen. Many have been agreed with local authorities and progress was starting to be made. After years of inaction on sites a cumulative need has built up. The situation now is worse than ever and will only get worse without new provision.

My MP, Conservative Mark Pawsey, has stepped up recently to offer his thoughts on this incredibly complex, entrenched and sensitive issue. Below is the text of the email I've just written to him. I've also put in an FOI request to Warwickshire County Council, asking for more information about site provision in Warwickshire - I'll report back, and may follow up with the same request to Rugby Borough Council - which, by the way, has a Conservative majority, and as I note below, has still expressed concern at the impact of the cuts.

Sunday 12 September 2010

Dear Mr Pawsey

I write following your recent comments in the Westminster Hall debate on Unauthorised Encampments of the 8^th September, 2010. Your statement displayed a failure to acknowledge, and perhaps a lack of understanding of, the challenges facing Gypsies and Travellers in the UK and the lives that have already been needlessly lost. It certainly appeared as if you were failing to represent those of your constituents who are themselves Gypsies and Travellers, or who support their right to pursue their legally recognised traditional way of life.

Due to government legislation, planning restrictions and sale of public land, the number of safe and legal stopping places for Gypsies and Travellers have been dramatically reduced. Gypsy families therefore often have to prioritise finding appropriate places to stop over attending preventative medical appointments such as smear tests and pre- and postnatal checks. A Department of Health study from 2004 found that coping with eviction, discrimination and poor living conditions is seen by Gypsies as being a primary cause of ill-health, particularly among women, facing the massive challenges of raising children ‘in situations where there may be no running water, shared toilets, leaking roofs and no washing machine’.

Due to widespread and persistent racism, particularly among support staff, and suspicion of conventional medicine, Gypsies and Travellers are more likely to see easy-access or peripatetic medical staff than to establish a relationship with 'the GP, practice nurse, a counsellor, chiropodist, dentist, optician, or alternative medical workers’. Thus they often do not understand or access their entitlements to preventative medicine such as childhood immunisations, antenatal checks and smear tests, and may put off seeking healthcare advice, or may under-use or discard prescriptions and medication.

As a result, medical conditions which can easily be controlled go unmonitored and unmedicated, or else medication is not reviewed and any side effects are not followed up. Gypsies are proven to suffer disproportionally from illness associated with poverty and poor living conditions, such as asthma, chest infections, heart disease, and disability, smoking and alcohol-related illnesses.

For Gypsy women these inequalities have severe consequences. The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths in 2002 found that of the disproportionately high number of Gypsy mothers who died during the period of study, almost all died either directly due to substandard care or as a result of associated problems. Their children are also at risk. Although the Department of Health found similar levels of common problems such as morning sickness, pre-term birth, breech presentation, or post-natal depression, miscarriage and Caesarean delivery were more common among Gypsy women. Incredibly, 17.6% of Gypsy and Traveller women studied had experienced the death of a child, compared with 0.9% of the comparators. Gypsy infants were found to have ‘low birth weight, low immunisation uptake and high child accident rate’, and there was a markedly high incidence of stillbirths.

In the case of Gypsy and Traveller mothers and babies, it is clear that the 'cycle of enforced nomadism' and lack of government leadership has lead to unnecessary deaths – and this is just one small area of policy. In this context, it is irresponsible and short-sighted to support public authorities in a knee-jerk, populist approach to retrospective Gypsy and Traveller planning applications without taking account of, and engaging with the wider problem. Rugby Borough Council has itself expressed concern at the impacts of the cuts and scrapping of targets implemented by the Coalition Government.

I urge you to take the earliest opportunity to outline how you will support a balanced and responsible approach to this issue, in all its complexity. I particularly recommend reading the 2004 Department of Health Study by Van Cleemput and Parry. I would also be delighted to brief you personally, at your convenience, if this would be helpful.

Yours sincerely

Laura Hudson

Academic paywalls, and mobile technology in conflict-affected states - there's more than you think

I'm blogging from the World Bank's Innovation Fair: Moving Beyond Conflict in Cape Town, South Africa. In presenting a bit about FrontlineSMS and some thoughts on SMS in conflict, I referenced an article from Development In Practice, 'Challenging conventional views on mobile-telecommunications investment: evidence from conflict zones' (Agnieszka Konkel & Richard Heek Volume 19, Issue 3 May 2009, pages 414 - 420). Lots of thoughtful nods when I was talking, so I thought I'd put up a link and some of the findings.

The paper argues that the accepted pillars of a good 'investment climate' - 'security and stability, finance and infrastructure, workers and labour markets, and the regulatory framework and tax' - underpinned by 'good, stable governance' may not, in fact, be prerequisites for investment in mobile telephony. Afghanistan, DRC and Somalia, three countries with poor governance indicators, all show rapid mobile penetration growth rates between 2001 and 2006. Tentatively, they conclude that these figures are due to foreign investment, and possibly to individuals prioritising mobiles over other needs:

'...insecure countries are places of great uncertainty, and uncertainty pushes up the value of information. Thus citizens will be willing to invest a greater than average level of their income on information and communication technologies, particularly those – like mobile phones – which can help to provide just the kind of information (safe/unsafe locations, approaching dangers, places to find scarce commodities, etc.) that addresses their main uncertainties.'

Interesting implications for using mobiles and other information-sharing tools in conflict - and certainly fertile ground for future research. If you can get a copy of this short and useful article, it's well worth a read.

A Short Rant

A perennial complaint of mine is that so much excellent analysis and thinking - from conceptual thinking that could change our whole approach to aid and development, to deeply practical hazard prediction and mapping - is locked up in academic prose and, fatally, behind paywalls. David Steven on Global Dashboard wrote about this recently. Academic journals perform a vital function, but the ridiculous costs make the articles in them absolutely inaccessible to many in NGOs. The result: good work going to waste, and work on the ground and in offices in capitals all over the world not benefitting from the combined wisdom of the world's academics. Some examples of great free-to-air content:

• the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute
• the International Review of the Red Cross
• the Public Library of Science - PLoS.org (thanks to @EvieBrowne for the link).

Any more for any more?

SCHR: Updated position paper on civil-military relations

SCHR have revised and updated their position paper on Civil Military relations, first written in 2001 and updated in 2004, and have produced a very readable survey of the state of the debate. The paper:

'...looks primarily at how SCHR agencies consider relations with armed forces in situations of armed conflict, or natural disasters taking place in contested environments. This paper contributes to the current debate on humanitarian-military relations and fosters a better understanding of the respective roles and the necessity for humanitarian actors to commit to the positions elaborated herein. It is intended to inform and guide the internal policies and practical guidance of SCHR agencies.'

Read more on Reliefweb.

Getting into aid work: dos and don'ts for internships for organisations and hopeful entrants

I'm about to leave my first (or second, depending on how you count it) job at a large humanitarian aid organisation after three years. In that time I've had many conversations about the rights and wrongs of internships - whether or not they are useful, for the organisation and the individual; who benefits the most; whether they are ethical.

Then the other day, this article surfaced on my Twitter feed, arguing that making internship a critical element of getting into politics effectively restricts the field to the affluent. Hmm, I said. Same thing in aid work - you have to be young and unencumbered, or you can't do the internships and low-paid admin jobs that get you your first 'proper' job. Understandably, I got called on it - it is possible to get field-work positions which enable you to live a fairly nice lifestyle even at a low level. But when I'm talking about is pretty much the standard route recommended to many eager graduates from degree courses on aid and development in the UK, even by me. What follows is a personal take on this route, the pros and cons, and how to make it the best experience it can be for both aid agency and willing skivvy.

Why do an internship?

It's true, it's the best starting point I know of, barring outrageous luck or the money and chutzpah required to move out to Country X, and bang on doors until someone gives you a job because you're there and it's easy. The other alternative, by the way, is to get qualified as an accountant or a logistician or an engineer or a plumber and then work your way across laterally. But I'm assuming you're me, three years ago - newly graduated, with a theory-focussed degree under your belt and a headful of critical questions and fascinating debate, but no experience.

What an internship won't do: get you into the field. It's not magic. It will not of you an experienced aid worker make. It is the red pill that keeps you inside an aid agency office long enough to work out what happens there. Play your cards right and an internship, ladies and gentlemen, will get you your first admin job in an aid agency. This, by they way, is the way to get into aid work. It's unfair and a scandalous waste of your brilliance, but there it is.

Make the most of it:

• At interview, if the tasks aren't clear from the outset, clarify what you'll be doing. A good internship will mean you're treated like an employee - you should have a line manager and regular one-to-ones. Push to have specific projects, something you can stick your name on and put on your CV.
• Be realistic - organisations need extra pairs of hands for what can be totally naff jobs. Suck it up, Princess. You can learn from almost any working experience, be it organising lunch for a meeting or event (ask to sit in the corner! offer to write up the note!), going through boxes of old papers (pinch unwanted articles and books!), analysing data (a vital skill) and writing summaries of programmes.
• Many internship schemes offer proper training, including inductions on the organisation structure and ethos. Take advantage of this. Understanding the basics of the humanitarian aid system, such as the difference between international organisations, NGOs, and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement makes you sound professional and knowledgeable and can make a real difference later. And first aid training is always handy. Grab it with both hands.
• Similarly, take advantage of any opportunity you have to learn. You can't fail to pick up terminology and an understanding of how things work on the ground (i.e. what you can't get from a degree) if you keep your ears and eyes open and read every document that passes through your inbox whether it's relevant to your duties or not. Focus on real narrative accounts of programmes: evaluations, trip reports, and the like, rather than strategy or policy documents - they might give a bigger picture but on their own they won't give you anything you can't get on the internet.
• That said, be informed. Find out which geographical and thematic areas are key for your adopted organisation and start following relevant news on IRIN and Reliefweb. A scan of the headlines and reading one or two articles in the morning will do wonders for your knowledgeable expression at team meetings. The more savvy you seem, the better the work you'll get.
• Apropos: lingo matters. Acronyms and buzzwords are the curse of every industry but they are crucial to your credibility. Understand the org chart and the shorthand people are using and it will gain you respect.
• Make contacts and use, but don't abuse them. It's great to have the organisation on your CV and someone with a proper job title to put down as a referee (don't forget to ask!). But don't abuse it - regular emails asking for work will put people off. You want them to remember you if you ever go back to them for a job, and not in the bad way.
• If you see an opportunity to apply for an admin role within the team or the wider organisation, do go for it. The path of least resistance is very attractive to agencies who are always under tremendous pressure, and someone with experience of the organisation who can start immediately will often trump someone who might beat you to the job on an equal footing. Make no mistake - the admin job is the first step towards something meatier.
• While you're at it, get some experience of travel in developing countries. It won't make you employable on its own, but it does show passion and interest and is the only argument I can think of for the sort of paid volunteering scheme Alanna Shaikh rightly despises. When the time comes for you to apply for support jobs where you'll be more involved with programmes, it'll show that you're competent and safe to travel in difficult places.

Agencies - don't be evil.

Interns are good cannon fodder, it's true - free and fifty of them queuing out the door for every job. But they are people too, so be nice:

• Do a proper advert and recruitment process. Good practice, good experience for them, and you will get the cream of the crop. On spec CVs and people's friends' children might be good, but opening it up to the field means you'll get someone great.
• Make it possible for people without a trust fund. Pay reasonable travel and lunch expenses, and don't require full-time hours and extended commitments. A three-day week for three months is absolutely do-able even for London - you can cover your three unpaid days with four days of bar work and still pay the rent for three months.
• Build a job description around general support and admin (and be clear about this at interview), but add one central project they can get their teeth into and include on their CV. As long as they knew what they were getting into, it's fine to give them administrative and repetitive work. The intern should be aiming for an admin job in the sector, so they will need to prove they can do this kind of work.
• Don't use them for the wrong jobs. If you have an endless procession of interns doing mapping and coordination work, say, others in your workplace will get frustrated that their are continually briefing beginners, and you'll be missing an opportunity to give something meaty to your admin staff, who (make no mistake) know the place backwards.
• Admit them to organisational induction programmes and normal training and learning events - inexpensive and a good perk for the intern.Make sure they know exactly who their line manager is, and make them approachable. Managing interns is a good fillip for first- and second-jobbers too, as it adds personnel management to their list of experiences. But do the odd review yourself so you know how the relationship is going.
• Finally, a pet hate. Some organisations have rolling internships for support jobs which other organisations would run as a permanent position. This isn't fair to the project or the people. If there are real responsibilities and long hours, and they'll be in trouble if they don't deliver, it's a salaried role.

So what did I miss? Any other tips and rants, leave them in the comments and we can all have a row about this.

Web101: RSS Feeds

I know you love this blog. Here you are, after all. You may picture me slaving over a hot laptop all night, scouring the internet for all this fun stuff... but no. In fact, the news is delivered to my laptop as it's published.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. (WhatisRSS)

There are two options for how to use them every day:

1. Bookmark a feed, either in your bookmarks toolbar or your normal bookmarks folder, so you can glance at the list every now and then, or
2. Use an RSS feed reader like Feeddemon (PC), NetNewsWire (Mac), Reeder (iPhone) orViigo (Blackberry). These options allow you to download your feeds ahead of time, browse articles wherever you are, and save any you want to go back to later.

Here's my magic bumper humanitarian policy fun feed to get you started. Enjoy!