Travels through Work and Thought

This article takes the form of a life story which demonstrates a person's gradual evolution of thinking, the drawbacks of working to ideals, and the problems of governments and aid programmes in focusing on those who really do suffer the disproportionate burden of mental and physical suffering, or death.

In particular it highlights the redundancy of most of the categories used in development (poverty, power, women etc.). Instead it shows that, whatever category is chosen, there is a minority that still suffer disproportionately highly whilst the majority are able to cope. It is that minority whose problems are caused by their immediate social support environment from family or local community.

The illustrations are around the problem of child death, but they could easily have been from any other development sector.

These themes are inevitably intertwined, and thus make for a fairly complex approach which means it is a bit lengthy at 40 pages — so if you don't want to spend time on it you can just read the opening and the end sections which have the chapter heading 'Reflections'.

You can download the pdf or view it online at https://www.dropbox.com/s/pady67fbjgygvg4/Travels%20through%20work%20and%20thought%2022Apr2022.pdf?dl=0