A lot of people think pretty deep thoughts about the nexus of humanitarian aid and social media. I'm not one of them. Nevertheless, I started blogging and tweeting about international development and humanitarian aid a couple of years ago. Here's what I've learned so far.

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Baby boomers are still asking 'What can I do for my country (and my world)?' and the answer is, probably a lot more than they could when they were 20.

Peace Corps and Bonnie Lee Black have something in common: age. Peace Corps celebrated its 51st anniversary in...

Earlier today, I was wondering what mattered most in terms of rates of volunteerism in America: having spare time or spare money. I would have thought that time was the critical factor. Turns out I was wrong. A look at the data shows an inverse relationship between unemployment rates and...

USA Today reported today that the number of volunteers in America dropped by 600,000 from last year, bringing the national volunteering rate down by a half a percentage point, to 26.3%. The data was from Volunteering In America, a government website that tracks and reports on...

Microfinance has lost its soul. Six fundamental shifts in the practice of microfinance have left it operating more like a for-profit bank and less like an innovative pro-poor movement.

I don't have much against banks; they mostly do good things for people who can access their services. But, if you...

The ongoing debate on poverty tourism got a paroxysm of blogger attention following the recent op-ed in The New York Times by Kennedy Odede, whose personal experience gave him harsh words for what he called Slumdog Tourism. A good assemblage of recent...