In the lead up to the general election on November 26, the Labour Party of New Zealand has released its Overseas Development Assistance Policy. Most notable in the policy is the re-establishment of NZAID, a semi autonomous aid and development agency accountable to the government through the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Overseas Development Assistance, with a direct line of advice from the Executive Director for NZAID who will be appointed by the State [...]

Much of today’s media, certainly the stuff that we see the most, is dominated and owned by large business interests. There is an obvious danger in that – whatever news may hurt those interests is either not going to be told, or will be told in such a way that minimizes damages. Because of this, any civil society should see the promulgation and promotion of quality independent media as something of high importance. We need [...]

Many of the news stories covering the Occupy Wall Street protests have expressed that the protesters don’t seem to have defined exactly what it is they want, as if there needs to be one clearly definable outcome that the protesters ‘sell’ so that others can ‘buy’. Such thinking misses the point. From the way I see it from the other side of the world in New Zealand, Occupy Wall Street is a sweeping expression of dissatisfaction about [...]

The current global system of power and finance in its many guises is at an interesting juncture. As markets continue to trip and stumble their way along, driven by greed and fear, protests are happening all over the place for varying reasons. Many are protesting ‘austerity’ measures that seek to cut state costs in various nations – cuts that hurt large portions of populations with the weakest being hurt the most while their wealthy are [...]

I gave one of our young interns (David Tan) at TEAR Fund the task of trying to define poverty as part of his journey of working out what good ‘development’ is – here is what David wrote. Feel free to share your thoughts on the topic with him -Frank The question “what is development?” cannot be answered without first asking “what is poverty?” After all, the purpose of development is to abolish poverty. Defining poverty [...]

The following article is written by David Tan, a year 12 student from Rangitoto College. As part of the College’s Gateway programme, David is getting some work experience at TEAR Fund. What the heck is “development”? It’s an important question. I wonder what happened to the $45 cheque I gave to TEAR Fund last month… it’s a lot of money for an unemployed seventeen-year old teen. I want lives to be transformed and dreams to [...]

This quote came into my email inbox this morning thanks to the Sojourners voice of the day: I much prefer a person who can love God enough to take a handout of bread, to a person who can give a hundred dollars for God’s sake. … The poor [one], by taking the handout, gets closer to God than [the one] who gave the one hundred dollars for God’s sake. Meister Eckhart It’s an interesting quote [...]

Global leaders are gathering to ‘build political momentum for nutrition efforts that will help save the lives of at least 1 million children annually’ as they seek to fight child hunger. The headline at Alertnet reads: Global Leaders Issue Declaration to End Child Hunger My immediate thought after seeing the headline was: They can’t eat your declaration! World leaders have been making commitments, declarations and agreements around extreme poverty issues for decades. Some have been [...]

The latest edition of New Internationalist carries a solid article on the re-emergence of the far right in European politics. With consistent, popularized messaging in a time when people’s fears can be easily preyed upon they have managed to claw their way back into the mainstream political scene to the point where larger parties are following some of their rhetoric to maintain their grip on power. The distrust of the far right in European politics stems back [...]

Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death for children under five in the developing world. Because of this, the recent announcement by a group of leading pharmaceutical firms, including UK based GlaxoSmithKline, to slash the price of Rotavirus vaccinations in the developing world is a welcome announcement. Al Jazeera has reported the story and Paul Cook, head of Advocacy for Tearfund UK, was interviewed about the announcement. Paul is a great guy and did a [...]