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Author: Elmira Bayrasli
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Inside the poverty puzzle: a plug for slum tours
A year ago today, I landed in Mumbai, India’s bustling business capital. I traveled there to spend time with 1298, a for-profit ambulance company that set up operations in response to the city’s lack of emergency care. That’s right, India’s largest commercial center doesn’t have ambulances. Mumbai simply lacks the capacity and resources for such [...]
Rwanda: Progress or Democracy?
Rwanda is on everyone’s mind again. Sixteen years after the country suffered through a civil war and endured the nightmare of a genocide, we’re once again concerned about the tiny east African nation, no bigger than Maryland. This time our concern is over the country’s “democracy” in the hands of president Paul Kagame, who won [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Ataturk, democracy, development, entrepreneurship, Kagame, poverty, Rwanda 3 Comments
What is the middle class?
Last Saturday, the NYT ran a piece on Indonesia’s economic miracle. “After Years of Inefficiency, Indonesia Emerges as an Economic Model.” That the South Asian island nation is rapidly growing wasn’t much of a surprise. How the piece defines middle class was:
“In Jakarta, worsening traffic and a proliferation of megamalls are seen as signs [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged economic development, entrepreneurship, Indonesia, middle class Leave a comment
The color of writing
Announcing HYBRID AMBASSADORS: a blog-ring project of Dialogue2010 You met our multinational cultural innovators this spring in a roundtable discussion of hybrid life at expat+HAREM. Now in these interconnected blog posts they share reactions to a recent polarizing book promotion at the writing network SheWrites.Join the discussion on Twitter using #HybridAmbassadors or #Dialogue2010
I loved the Brady Bunch.
Never wanting to miss an [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged African American, Brady Bunch, color, James Baldwin, Lori Tharps, race, She Writes, Toni Morrison, writing 16 Comments
Should food be a right?
Today’s NYT runs an off-lead story “Looking at Aid, India Asks, Should Food Be a Right?” It’s a rich piece that lays out the challenges of a government continuing a food distribution system to feed its poor, or perhaps developing a different system that doles out food coupons or cash, versus a government conceding to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged entrepreneurship, India, market-based solutions, NYT, poverty, poverty alleviation Leave a comment
The Billionaire’s Giving Pledge: A letter to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett
Dear Bill and Warren:
Congratulations. Getting 40 of the world’s wealthiest to sign away a significant amount of their fortunes is a tremendous feat. As a non-profit worker who has struggled to drive in donor dollars from this target group, I’m impressed, though not surprised. None of us are.
Not surprised because very few of us have your collective star [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged aid, Bill Gates, charity, giving, giving pledge, Nick Kristof, philanthropy, poverty, poverty alleviation, Ronald Perelman, Warren Buffett, White Man's Burden 1 Comment
Profit: A dirty word?
Is it okay to profit off the poor? I, along with a number of other development junkies, debated this point over Twitter on Friday. It came at the behest of the inimitable Matthew Bishop, co-author of Philanthrocapitalism.
He did so following a blog post he and co-author Michael Green wrote following Muhammad Yunus’s reaction over the [...]
Be careful what you wish for
The Turkish-based charity Insani Yardim Vakifi, known by the initials IHH, has come under heavy scrutiny since Israeli commandoes attacked the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara last week. It was IHH funds that bankrolled the Mavi Marmara’s “humanitarian” voyage to deliver relief supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. Was there more to it?
Israelis believe so. “The IHH..is widely [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged entrepreneur, entrepreneurship philanthropy, flotilla, IHH, Mavi Marmara, Muslim entrepreneur, Turkey 2 Comments
U.S. to Iran: Let’s be friends
Barack Obama shocked the Washington foreign policy establishment when, back in 2007, he said, “we’ve got to talk directly to Iran.” It was a policy prescription that beltway insiders may have considered but certainly none openly discussed. To do so would have been “naïve,” which is exactly what then candidate Obama was called.
In his new [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Iran, Middle East, Reset: Iran, Stephen Kinzer, Turkey, Turkey and America's Future Leave a comment
What’s in a(n American) name?