A few weeks ago I wrote that the UK and its devolved governments tried to fix a problem with student grades that wasn’t there. What I meant by that was that rather than tackle the issue of a final assessment of performance, which had been interrupted because of the pandemic, Read more…
“We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. …We are gods in the chrysalis.” Elbert Hubbard Two weeks ago I wrote about understanding your vision for social impact very well to avoid unintended negative impacts as much as possible. The definition of Social Impact that I tend to Read more…
I’ve been working on a social return on investment analysis for a carbon storage programme in Indonesia, when I came across a relatively new concept in valuing social impact. The project currently uses the Climate Community Biodiversity (CCB) Standards and has structured its outcomes accordingly, which has been very useful for identifying Read more…
In July I wrote about how important a rights-based approach to access is becoming and about how equity is sometimes more important than equality. Last month, the UK government and devolved administrations demonstrated spectacularly why these issues are so important when they tried to apply an algorithm to already standardised Read more…
If you read even half of what I write on this blog you’ll know that participation is a regular topic. A theme almost. Many years ago I realised that the best kind of social impact is designed by the people who will benefit from that social impact. I’ve also seen Read more…
Last week I highlighted how important access is and would continue to become as the UK and other countries continue to grapple with the fall out of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have also seen in the news how countries have used their lockdowns to focus in on those issues that Read more…
This post might be a little UK-centric as that is the context that I’m operating in. But I suspect that some of the themes will resonate… Many people have written or tweeted or posted about how the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted inequalities in our societies right at a time when Read more…
These days you hear a lot of talk about the ‘new normal’ or ‘nothing’s normal’ or some variation of ‘things will never be the same again’. That is true. But then that has always been true even in uninteresting times. Everything is always changing. Sometimes it takes a massive global Read more…
The world is more than a little topsy turvy these days. I was reading an excellent thought piece on LinkedIn by a colleague of mine Iulian Circo recently where he outlined 5 pointers for dealing with a deep global super-crisis such as Covid-19. He noted that while no-one really knows Read more…
Black lives matter. Gay lives matter. Trans lives matter. Women’s lives matter. But our systemic inequality means that some lives matter more than others. The opposite of inequality isn’t always equality. To begin with the opposite of inequality is equity. Equity and equality are two different things and it is Read more…