Last year, around this time, I got excited about Facebook Causes application, and the potential for social networking as a tool for fundraising and awareness on development issues.



Just up, YouTube and Google have ramped up their social engagement, allowing you more ways to give and increase your knowledge about development issues.



YouTube has launched their Nonprofit Program.  They offer the opportunity to “broadcast your cause,” or tune into others that are broadcasting theirs.  I wandered by the One Campaign Make Poverty History channel today to see what it was all about.



Capitalizing on Google’s ad revenue, Ethicle is a search engine that gives 1 cent to charity for every search you make from their site.  The results you get are the same ones you’d get through a google search, but you can watch how your searches are contributing to a cause.  As well, Ethicle gives you the option to customize the destination of your click revenue, including organizations that work in human rights, the environment, humanitarian relief, public health, animal rights and community development.  Check it out. 

Today I read a couple of chapters about ‘conceptualizing poverty’ in the textbooks for my Africa into the 21^st Century class.  They prompted me to think again about the role of modernity in development, as I was asked to do in the first year of my studies.  I thought maybe it would be useful to talk about it here a little because I think its one of the important places that academic and ‘real life’ understandings of international development differ.

When we, as individual Canadians, go to make a donation to a charity that works in Africa or Asia or Latin America, what do we expect the outcome to be?  Are we expecting to change the life of an individual?  Do ‘our part’ to change the future of the developing world?  I think it is an important question to think about.

Thinking about modernity plays an important part of answering this question for a lot of people.  For instance, if we are acting to do “our part” to change the future of the developing world, what does that future look like?  For many, that future looks a little bit more like our world does (trading huts for houses, youth accessing education…phones, fridges, grocery stores).  This concept relies heavily on the notion that countries and individuals move through different phases of modernity, from primitive to modern.  In effect, it assumes that ‘all roads lead to modernity’.  That rather than being different, countries in the developing world are just ‘not yet’ like ours.

Something to think about when you’re planning where your money goes and what your own expectations of international development are, is whether or not you believe in this view, and if you don’t, what is the alternative?  And does this change how you give?

You can find a pretty good discussion of Modernization (and Dependency) Theory here.

This week, all the International Development Studies Co-op students who’ve just returned from placement will be showing their photography at Gallery 1265.  Come and check out Our Unwritten Experience.  

Yesterday I sat down and watched Black Gold, a movie about Ethiopia and the international coffee trade (its easier to procrastinate my thesis if I am doing other ‘productive’ things in the place of writing). I wish I hadn’t. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it forces me again to question my increasingly frequent trips to Starbucks for my favourite bevvy: a grande, non-fat, Americano Misto. The movie does such a good job of illustrating the disparity between the lives of coffee consumers here in the West and the producers in the South (in this case, Ethiopia’s highlands), and about the effects of declining coffee prices on their ability to meet basic needs. The long and the short of it is that these farmers are unable to meet their basic needs and are converting their fields to the more lucrative production of Khat, another popular stimulant (but one that falls on the United States’ Controlled Substance list).

I’ve said before that an individual’s role in international development isn’t just in charity. It’s also in the daily choices that affect the relationships between developed and underdeveloped (whether it be individuals, states, regions). For me, this is the hardest part of being involved in development, and I continue to fail miserably at changing my consumption choices in a way that will minimize my participation in active underdevelopment.

To tune into someone who is doing a great job at participating in the “Fair” discussion, check out a friend’s soon-to-be released documentary, Threads of Wrath, questioning notions of ‘fairness’ among cotton farmers in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

Welcome to Unpacking Development!Stop by on your travels through the web to hear more about international development, including:

• Listings and coverage of development events in and around Toronto
• Opinion pieces on international issues 
• Links to interesting resources
• Critical discussions of charity, humanitarian aid, and recent development innovations

About the Authors:

Both Mel and I have a background in International Development and met while we were students at the University of Toronto, but both have different outlooks and interest (check out our bios here and here).  We hope that Unpacking Development will reflect our diversity and help our readers to become more interested and engaged in development themselves.

What is ‘international development’?

Before we start posting, it might be a good idea to let you know what we’re actually talking about when we say ‘international development’.In a general sense, ‘development’ means the improvement of livelihoods and greater quality of life for humans.  More specifically, ‘international development’ is a process undertaken to improve livelihoods and quality of life with the help of international actors (such as governments or non-governmental organizations).

Different from disaster relief or humanitarian aid, international development focuses on the long-term, within areas of governance, gender, health care, disaster prevention, infrastructure, economy, human rights and the environment.

Check out wikipedia’s entry on international development for more info.

Stay tuned!

We look forward to hearing your comments, feedback, and suggestions. Until then!