As luck would have it, I was in New York City today with many of my colleagues, and our allies from TIAA Divest!, Ekō and others. We were protesting TIAA’s continued harmful investments in fossil fuels and farmland outside the Bloomberg Invest conference where multiple TIAA executives were speechifying. We were lucky; it was relatively…
Last week, Reuters released a major investigative piece on climate finance The authors examined 10% of climate finance flows reported by developed countries to the UN, finding that: “at least $3 billion spent not on solar panels or wind farms but on coal-fired power, airports, crime-fighting or other programs that do little or nothing to…
One of the bigger stories of this past weekend came with the bland heading “California New Business Update” – State Farm, the biggest homeowner insurance company in California, is no longer accepting new homeowner or property insurance applications from anyone in California. The reasons? Rising construction costs, “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance…
At a wedding I attended recently, I fell into an interesting conversation with another guest. She asked me what I ‘do’ (somehow the words ‘for work’ are always implicit in this phrase, yet rarely spoken out loud), and I shared that I fundraise for an international human rights organization. I quickly assured her that I…
The leaders of development agencies and big donors, such as the EU and the United States, gathered today to comment on the Global Report on Food Crises 2023, which is dramatically alarming. In the words of the World Bank Director during the launch: “food crises, once exceptional, are becoming the new normal.” In 2022, 258…
In a tearful interview in a Q’eqchi Indigenous community of Rio Zarquito in Alta Verapaz Guatemala, Florinda Noemí Xol, told Prensa Comunitario why her 25-year-old son, Byron Lopez Xol, had left to migrate to the United States and had perished along with 38 other migrants abandoned to die in a horrific detention center fire in…
Every morning when I was a child, my dad would declare, in a sing-song voice – “There’s nothing like a nice, hot shower!” – as he stepped into the steaming shower and the first deluge of water hit the top of his head. It’s a motto that has stuck with my family, and it was…
I was disappointed, on multiple levels, to hear about the Biden administration’s nomination of Ajay Banga, a private equity executive with no experience in public service, to head the World Bank. First, the U.S. should have no real right to unilaterally name the World Bank President – it does so through an archaic “gentleman’s agreement”…
I am the new Development Intern at ActionAid USA. In my role, I assist the Development team with managing donor care and stewardship, researching prospects, and any other tasks that need to be done! I am incredibly excited to be starting this new journey. That is how I look at each job, internship, and class…
When global hunger was estimated to be 792 million people back in the year 2000, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) wrote in the 2000 State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) report: “In a world of unprecedented wealth, these levels of need are disgraceful.” Ten years later, in the 2010 SOFI…
