The INFO Project Blog

While many at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland were wringing their hands over the US housing slump, Jordan’s stunning Queen Rania was ringing in an exciting new campaign with the UN Foundation and Nike-convened Coalition for Adolescent Girls. Read on for Davos diaries from Bangladesh to Guatemala… Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Mundy and Evelyn Mathias have created an excellent resource on their website, Dev Comm, about collaborative workshops for developing communcation materials called writeshops. According to Mundy and Mathias, writeshops can can reduce the time needed to produce information and increase the value of the content at the same time. It’s a process for taking a draft and in an intensive editing and critique process - which can take from a few days up to a few weeks - come up with a final version. Sounds good to me!

To read more about how it works, visit the writeshop process page or read a short article about it. Mundy has also created a list of materials that have been produced as a result of writeshops, including some on family planning.

If you are interested in developing materials that document your work, you should also take a look at this excellent resource from the International HIV/AIDS Alliance - Documenting and communicating HIV/AIDS work (courtesy of One Source).

A new report from ICRW, the Center for Global Development, and the Population Council shows why investing in girls can be a boon for social and economic development. Asking,

Why should we pay more attention to girls? What difference can adolescent girls make in achieving positive development outcomes? How can stakeholders initiate effective investments that will give girls in developing countries a full and equal chance for rewarding lives and livelihoods?

The report addresses systematic disadvantes faced by girls over a wide range of welfare indicators, including health, education, nutrition, labor force participation, and burden of household tasks. Read the rest of this entry »

In an article published today in the Lancet, Oxford University researchers report that women taking combined oral contraceptives (COCs) for 15 years halved their chances of developing ovarian cancer. Although the findings are not unexpected (we’ve known for over 20 years that COCs help protect against this disease) this study, which pools worldwide data from 45 studies, confirms that that protection begins soon after a woman starts taking COCs, and increases with increasing duration of use. Read the rest of this entry »

As a longtime fan of her work, I was excited to learn that Jessica Mayberry’s Video Volunteers brigade has been selected to participate in America’s Giving Challenge, an online fundraising competition sponsored by Global Giving and Parade Magazine. Read the rest of this entry »