The blog Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like is really tearing it up lately. Their latest post is#45 - Blogging to Display Their Superior Thinking. An excerpt:
Microlending? Oversold uncritically as a silver bullet and only your Kiva-donating grandma still thinks this is a cure-all. Girl Effect? Undoes its own message with its objectionable messaging. Advocacy? You mean, “badvocacy?” Perilously reductionist and, anyway, spearheaded by way too many celebrities, neo-hippies and naive idealists for it to do any real good. In-kind donations? Logistical nightmare and destroyer of local markets. Popular journalists on the developing country beat (and Nicolas Kristof in particular)? Dangerously oversimplify complex global issues that only the real EAW bloggers truly understand.The secret and deep hope of the EAW blogger is to get the blessing of the aid blog patriarch, Bill Easterly, and any of his disciples, and get a shout out or, better yet, featured on his blogroll.
Ouch. Of course, none of this applies to me yet because I am not a real expat aid worker, but rather a grad student intending to be one. But hopefully this fall I will be able to start fulfilling this post (which I think is their best yet): #44 - Blogging for the Folks Back Home.
Update/clarification: the "wannabe" in the title is a reference to me. Thought that was clear, but maybe it wasn't.