As some of you may know I had another child almost 5 months ago. And I was forced to sit back and spend a lot of time nursing and holding a little baby. I say forced, not because it isn’t lovely, but because I like to “do things.” I spent a lot of that…

I had an interesting talk with another entrepreneur this weekend. It centred around integrity in the work our organizations do. He said that sometimes you need to adapt your product to what the client wants. But what if in doing this I need to…

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)… Why is it that seemingly harmless words or phrases are somewhat tainted nowadays? In an ideal world a commitment to CSR would focus on all aspects of your business- from how you source and manufacture…

Last week, I watched as my downtown got taken over by a rioters. I was glued to my tv watching quite helplessly the events of the evening unfold less than a 15 minute drive from the residential area I live in. Where both my…

I have spent the last 3 days in Ibanda, which is a town and the surrounding district in western Uganda. The people are Ankole (banyankole) which is a different culture than the people that live in Kampala or the Masaka region where I have visited previously.

Voluntourism has had a bad rap. And I think it deserves it. Why? Because often the people that get involved in voluntourism get involved for the wrong reasons: to make themselves feel good, to get into medical school, because they want an excuse to continue traveling to exotic and interesting places but feel guilty…

When I started designing my program I knew that situations and opportunities can turn on a dime. I want to teach youth about international community development, but I had seen time and time again the effect of broken promises and the damage it could…

I have been working in the international service learning arena for 7 years. For some this may not seem like a long time, but it has been a journey of discovery and change. I have a background in education – I teach about good…

It is with trepidation that I approach working with an organization that takes care of orphaned and abandoned children. It is not that I don’t believe in them- I very much do! It is that I have heard too often of volunteer experiences where…

Once again Nick Kristof has written an article on development and aid that has ticked people off. He claims “that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed.”

This simplistic approach to a complicated situation provides…