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 [...]

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 [...]

Lurking on the Reuters website I happened upon a video about a sixty year old farmer who lost his wife to the ever worsening crisis in The Horn of Africa. I clicked the play button expecting to see something along the lines of “Famine crisis in Horn of Africa” followed by maybe a link to one of the hundreds of aid organisations doing their part to curb the crisis there; but instead I was met [...]

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 [...]

Drew talks to Andrew Finlay about his time at TEAR Fund and his upcoming work in Vanuatu with Nasi Tuan.

In this edition of the podcast I catch up with Jo Kaybryn, Director of Policy for Plurpol, an innovative global consultancy, servicing governments, international civil society and businesses. They provide expertise in economic development, global health policy, social protection, natural resource management and conservation. In this discussion we focus on the issue of HIV/AIDS.

David talks about agri-business/technology. Richard discusses TEAR Fund’s projects in Sri Lanka and they explore future development opportunities.

Frank catches up with Jared, one of our Programme Officers, about his recent trip to Nepal to examine the work we support there.

Here’s a travel blog on my recent trip to Niue. My wife and I were only there for a one week holiday, so don’t expect anything profound, inspiring or well informed. If you’re familiar with my articles you wouldn’t be expecting that anyway.

The following video is of Hans Rosling making a TED presentation demonstrating through various data tools, how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. It is extremely interesting.