ShopTalk

Marta Dourado’s LatAm Tour Diaries: Peru

First stop: Lima Lima is my first stop. The city has something for everyone: archaeological sites, shiny casinos with well-dressed doormen, paragliding (yes, people jump in the central neighborhood of Miraflores during business hours!)…. I found out that although it doesn’t look like it, Lima is built on a desert. In fact, it is the […]

Marta Dourado’s LatAm Tour Diaries: An Introduction

I would like to tell you a little bit about how my trip and the special series came about. I am an associate at Baird’s CMC and also run my own consulting agency, Fundamento, which is based out of Brazil. A few months ago, we realized that we have been coordinating international communications projects in […]

The Problem That Never Was

A few years ago, an American pharmaceutical company approached Baird’s CMC with a problem. The company had begun spending US$ 5 million each year on a massive corporate PR programme in their African markets because they were convinced that civil society groups and leaders saw them as much worse than their competitors. “They were afraid […]

Two Coats: Creating Everyday Miracles

Seven years ago, Paul Dillon, associate at Baird’s CMC, co-founded a small aid organisation: Two Coats. Two Coats is based out of Greystones, a little village parish just outside Dublin. The parishioners, through various donations, generate a fund that enables Two Coats to form direct relationships with small-scale overseas development projects. Since its inception, the […]

Lessons from the candy store and the playground: how to defend government spending in hard times

The shelves in the government goody store are about to become a lot more bare. How will the kids cope? Those of us who try to change policy are a bit like a group of children at the sweet shop. We look at the shelves, pester our parents for money, try to do deals with […]

How come people in international development haven’t noticed the age of austerity?

Portugal is poised for a general strike to protest the austerity measures. Athens is cleaning up. British civil servants have been told that they can’t travel first class on the railways even if they use their own money to upgrade because it would send the wrong message. Across Europe (with the perennial exception of France), […]