It’s been a great year at how-matters.org! I am invoking a “shut down” for the holidays as of today and will return on January 15^th. Why the big break?

Because there are ideas to be flushed out, plans to be finalized, proposals to be finished, reflections and connections to be had.

2011 has been a “shake-up” year. With the Arab awakening in North Africa and the Middle East and the emergence of the Occupy…

The PROS....  

1. Dream Building provides a guidance,a pathway to what we want to achieve 



2. Dream Building provides a tool for measurement, measuring where we are to where we want to go, and assessing what we need to get there



3. Provides us with a sense of knowing when we get there , achieve the DREAM 



4. Because it is MY dream , I…

The Guyana Faith and HIV Coalition held a "Capture Knowledge" Session at Cara Lodge on 10 December, 2011 International Human Rights Day! The Session was attended by Rastafari Representatives, Muslim Representative, Christian Representatives, Hindu Representatives and Bahai Representatives! Dr. Ruben F. del Prado had his message read by an ILO Representative and the Master of Ceremony was Ras Ian General Secretary of the Guyana…

Carol Dweck is a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She has carried out a set of experiments with children that make a distinction between appreciating talent (‘You are very good at that.’) and appreciating effort (‘You really worked hard at that.’)

Here are some quotations from her work.

‘In the last 1990s when our country was at the height of the self esteem movement, the self esteem gurus told everybody to praise their children’s intelligence, to…

It is hard to fathom that a society could exist whereby one population can expect to live into their eighties, whilst another population would expect to live only till their forties.

It is this shameful and disturbing reality which authors of ‘The Grandest Challenge –…

4 children aged between 6 to 8 years old approached a colleague who was walking around a neighbourhood as part of his outreach efforts.  They told him that they had something to show him and then led him to the ground floor lift landing of the block where they reside.  There were pencil drawings on the walls and these children told our colleague that they knew exactly who did it. Before our colleague could actually comment,…

“But how will we hold them accountable?” the senior technical advisor said of the proposal from the high-profile NGO. “There’s not even a logframe in there.”

Silently in my cubicle, I thought, “Oh, if only that would only make people and organizations accountable…”

Obviously, the need and the desire to be accountable in our industry are not going away. With foreign aid budgets under fire in many donor countries, accountability perhaps becomes even more…

Here is a good example of how someone has posed a question of the community (KM4dev) and then taken the time to distill the responses to provide a summary and linked to the original discussion and listed resources offered.  

The topic is "How to collect and present Lessons Learnt" but could so easily apply to our discussions.  I suspect they may have learned something from…

Я думаю, что одно из самых больших наших достижений сегодня, это встреча с представителями Интернет- сообщества. Татьяна, Алесандр Афанасади Фидипов и я влюбились в идею СОЛТ и мы действительно хотели опробовать что-то в этом роде. 30 ноября мы пригласили к нему людей, которые известны благодаря своим публикациям в Интернете – журналистов- блоггеров и альтернативных пользователей социальных сетей, так же, как и детей из юношеских организаций.

Мы очень волновались, что они откажутся…

A Time For Change

Human rights film fest in Mumbai takes on a gamut of bêtes noires from violence, fundamentalism and corruption to gender discrimination and homophobia

FLASHPOINT Human Rights Film Festival returns to Mumbai for its second year with a collection of volatile and incisive human rights films from India and around the world.

Following on…

I think one of our greatest achievements in those days there was a meeting with representatives of the internet-community. Me, Tatiana and Alexander …

In medicine, we can spend such a vast proportion of time perceiving those with illnesses as patients, or as statistical numbers that we fail to regard them as individuals. This is particular pertinent to people living with HIV, which are in excess of 30 million; It is such a colossal number it can be hard to comprehend. Despite the wealth of research into prevention and treatment of HIV which has made an undeniable impact on survival of populations, the experience of the individual…

Are we smart, safe, stupid….mad?????

Thirty years’ experience of HIV and I am hearing and reading the same old insincere language; the same old clichés by the same old top down approach method, sprinkled with the very few HIV positive tokens.  Are we smart, safe stupid or what?

For thirty years the population has been hearing about the modes of transmission, the vulnerability factors that fuel the continued spread of HIV and for thirty years the majority of the…

30 years have passed since the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) published its first reported case of AIDS. Since then over 25 million people have died from AIDS and an estimated 33.3 million are living with HIV today.

While tremendous advances have been made in terms of treatment, steering AIDS from what was once a fatal disease to a now chronic one; AIDS is still a global health threat, with many in the developing world unable to access adequate treatment.

However, while…

Меня зовут, Елена. По профессии я

мед.сестра, поэтому о ВИЧ-инфекции имела некоторое представление. В медицинском

училище изучали эту тему, но довольно поверхностно, да ещё и каждые пять лет

повышали квалификацию в стационаре, где я работала хирургической сестрой. Учила

и сдавала экзамены хорошо... Как передаётся вирус, как стерилизуется

инструментарий и тому подобное. Однажды в стационар поступила девушка, 19 лет,

с диагнозом ВИЧ. Помню смотрела и удивлялась,…