Archives August 2017

Many female doctors in Pakistan drop out of the profession when they start a family. Now there’s a new scheme to help them to continue in practice from home using online video clinics – and it’s helping poor, remote, communities too.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-41003627/how-to-stop-female-doctors-from-dropping-out-in-pakistan
Looks like a great  project – I particularly like the way that it is giving greater control and agency to women on both ends of the project. Women providing care are able to continue in the career they are trained for, while women receiving care get support that they might otherwise not get at all. I would love to see this expanded into other regions, and into other sectors – this could work great for education, small business development and all kinds of other areas. It’s probably already being done somewhere else, but I can’t think of any specific examples right now. 🙂

Came across this video today and thought that I would pass it on – little humour because it’s almost the weekend! 🙂 Of course, we are all looking for systemic change, and that is what we are all working for all the time. However, it’s true that, in the meantime, while the system is still imperfect, this can seem like a tempting option. Well done as a way to shed light on an important topic. 🙂

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/02/bus-seats-mistaken-burqas-anti-immigrant-group-norwegian
While, naturally, I would rather not have any of these kinds of hate groups around, in this particular case, someone appears to have used it for a rather interesting little experiment. The picture of an empty bus was posted, and members of the group saw it as something completely different – responding with almost comical (if it weren’t so disturbing) – hatred for the empty bus.

The photographer said he was “interested to see how people’s perceptions of an image are influenced by how others around them react. I ended up having a good laugh.”

“I’m shocked at how much hate and fake news is spread [on the Fedrelandet viktigst page]. So much hatred against empty bus seats certainly shows that prejudice wins out over wisdom.”  Comment from Sindre Beyer, a former Labour party MP who said he has been following Fatherland first for some time, and published 23 pages of screenshots of the group’s outraged comments.