Ida's Blog (11)

Power is a loaded issue here in Ethiopia, especially this week with the diaspora community raising concerns about the Gibe III damn project, which could threaten the livelihood of 500,000 people. The efficacy of this project is highly suspect. Even though Ethiopia desperately needs better sources of power, the government is content to shut off power even in the capital for profit. Last year, the capital was only… Continue

This week's episode brings back a lot of fond memories of Rio. I've been twice. I'm not a big football fan, but I knew whenever there was an important match because you'd hear synchronous cheers from all across the city when a favorite team scored.



The EVOKE team's oversight of football's mobilizing power is surprising. João's apparent apathy in the face of impunity given police

corruption and drug lord rule seems like a very realistic attitude. I've

read about a lot of… Continue

Home grown kale sauteed with lots of garlic and steamed brown rice. A glass of organic California merlot.

My diet hasn't changed much in 10 years. How refreshing. :)

Thanks to a fast growing population, aggressive farming practices, and

deforestation, over 70% of Ethiopia’s land is subject to desertification,

the deterioration of land due to loss of moisture and vegetation.

Reforestation is one way to combat this process. On International

Volunteer Day, December 5th, volunteers in Debre Sina, Ethiopia planted… Continue

The history of food security in Ethiopia is complicated and dramatic. Periodic droughts result in the famines every 10 years or so. There is much debate on the political nature of these famines and the distribution of infrastructure development and aid. The stakes are high, and solutions need to be cheep, portable, and people centered.



A Canadian NGO is funding water pump development here to help lift the poorest people out of poverty. Their pump designs use of raw heat from… Continue

In this Next Step, I'd like to thank Alaya for her post on the 1st Imagine Mission of envisioning herself 10 years from now. It brought to mind my own concerns about excellence as well as some hopes I have for my mother.



I'm 25 and have done a lot. Sometimes I think I've done too much. I've gotten in over my head, taken too much on, been unrealistic. Urgent Evoke's insistence on… Continue

This is a (belated?) response to the Game 1 challenge.

The organization Hope for Children here in Ethiopia does not so much embody courage as much as it provides people impacted by AIDS with the support to find their own courage. Hope for Children provides services to some 800 kids in Addis Ababa who have lost one of both parents to…

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I noticed a number of images of emaciated African children with no contextual information in the photo evidence uploads. The history of these photos is very complicated, and unfortunately the emotional response they provoked in the West did not have the intended impact on the ground.



Many of photos are from the Ethiopian Famine of 1984, setting the tone for how Africa would be represented to the outside world for decades to come. Here in Ethiopia, most people I talk to can't stand… Continue

Nairobi's iHug launched the same day as Urgent Evoke. I'm excited to shadow iHub manager and 2009 TED Fellow Jessica Colaço as she works to turn Kenya into Africa's ITC hub. I'm following her on Twitter, subscribing to her blog as well as iHub's blog, and writing her an email to introduce myself and congratulate her on her amazing work.

Ten years from today I will be visiting in the ex-guerrilla Santa Anita La Union in Guatemala to help them edit and archive the the media they've created over the past 8 years of communicating and organizing over the internet. I got to know the community in the mid-2000s and realized they had an important story to tell the world. I did my best to tell their story (1,… Continue

My favorite secret of social innovation is Amy Smith's 2nd rule: Listen to the Right People.



I've spent a lot of time in developing countries trying to listen to the people who stand to gain the most from social entrepreneurship efforts. It's so dishertening to realize how many of the stories we hear about these efforts are told by intermediaries. Not only are… Continue