Mass Advocacy and Controversy
Invisible Children’s Kony2012—a 30-minute YouTube video—has gone famously “viral,” garnering more than 70 million views in a week, with numbers still growing. Yet, criticism is growing almost as fast: long-time advocates in Uganda and elsewhere are pointing out glaring omissions, oversimplification and even misinformation. The blowback undercuts Invisible Children’s advocacy effort. Policy change is complex. Advocacy messages needs to reflect that complexity without overwhelming audiences.
Free Resource for American Evaluation Association Members
For all AEA members out there, there will be a free webinar on website evaluation on March 22nd at 2PM EST. The presentation will discuss useful methods to evaluate programs whose services are either fully or partially delivered through the internet. At 20-minutes, you can’t go wrong with this one. Take a coffee break with AEA and y’know, learn stuff.
Funding…Ideas
Here at The Aspen Institute, we really like ideas. We even host an annual festival to generate them. In the same spirit, The Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative is seeking to fund a few “game changing ideas” (not this one, mind you) with the potential to re-define the way we communicate the impact of development aid. We’re keeping our eyes and ears open to what comes out of this innovative challenge.
