International Development Quotes

“It is the duty of the United Nations, is to make every international border a garden, a place of art and cultural festival.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“As for the third Official Reason: exposing Western Hypocrisy - how much more exposed can they be? Which decent human being on earth harbors any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ warfare, chemical weapons - they virtually invented it all.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“Something ought to be said for those who see beyond what most cannot, and this most precious opportunity happens the moment when ones personal value begins blossoming its perfect absolute.”
― Steven Cuoco, Guided Transformation

“Poverty is not only about income levels, but for lack of freedom that comes from physical insecurity”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“The problem with the World Bank has to do with development - the spreading of Western over-consumption worldwide.”
― Herman E. Daly

“They are among the three hundred million Africans who earn less than a dollar a day, and who are often pushed out of the way or killed for such things as oil, water, metal ore, and diamonds.”
― Daoud Hari, The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur

“Chad has oil wells, so there are a few grand hotels for rich, who come to quickly take the money away before it ruins the charm of our mud and straw cities.”
― Daoud Hari, The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur

“It is a tragedy, at rate at which EBOLA VIRUS is spreading in West Africa. It is a fatal disease in the history of the world. Intensive education (formal and informal approaches) of the citizens of African can help prevent the spread. International cooperation is urgently needed to combat the EBOLA virus.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“I know that if you spend enough on each person person in a village, you will change their lives. If you put in enough resources-enough mzungu,foreigners, technical assistance, and money-lives change. I know that....The problem is, when you walk, what happens? -Simon Bland”
― Nina Munk, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty

“Liang Qichao came away disappointed. American democracy seemed to spawn "mediocre politicians, corruption, disorder, racism, imperialism". "In short," noted the late J K Fairbank, most prolific and influential of America's sinologists, "he got our number, and it turned him off.”
― John Keay, China: A History

“What can we do? We cannot enforce. We try to explain. We want to empower. But no one can come and change them if they do not want themselves -Ahmed Maalim Mohamed”
― Nina Munk, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty

“You cannot move forward in your life if you do not allow yourself to move.”
― Steven Cuoco, Guided Transformation

“Is everything forbidden us except to fold our arms? Poverty is not written in the stars; under development is not one of God's mysterious designs.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“The results you deserve depend on your will to make your success happen."

-Steven Cuoco”
― Steven Cuoco, Guided Transformation

“We talk about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which for me is excellent! As individuals working in international development, have we taken the time to think and talk about our Personal Development Goals ( PDGs)? Do we demonstrate on a daily basis how our day-to-day activities contribute to the achievement of the SDGs?
Be the change you want to see in the global space? Let us build our personal capacities for global action!”
― Benjamin Kofi Quansah, CGMS

“To care deeply about a State that does not care about you is a tragedy.

A tragedy I have come to embrace.”
― Malebo Sephodi

“I’m excited to announce that Book 2 of our series, My Job: More People at Work Around the World, is in production. Having met hundreds of people in fascinating jobs, I faced an enormous challenge in selecting the stories to include in Book 2 . . . but I believe this collection will surprise and delight you. It covers a range of jobs in the following sections:

Health and Recovery
Education and Finance
Agribusiness and Food Processing
Arts and Culture
Activism and Diplomacy
The book allows you to experience what it’s like to be an addiction-recovery counselor trained as a clown in London, an art teacher working with gang members in Chicago, a midwife working in rural villages in Guatemala, or a mobile-banking agent making her first million in Zambia.

Book 2 will take you places you’ve never been, from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia to a serene beach in Tel Aviv, Israel, and take you deep into the true stories of what it’s like to work at jobs as disparate as teaching a grieving widow to dance, to negotiating with a terrorist.

The book will publish in March and is available for preorder at Amazon.”
― Suzanne Skees

“Extreme poverty isn’t just an African issue or an Asian issue or a South American issue. It is a global issue. Before flying overseas to help relieve poverty abroad, consider the poverty in your own backyard.

Every country on every continent has people impacted by poverty—whether it is relative or absolute. Bringing extreme poverty down to zero will take more trial and error, more methods, more innovation, and more communication. Most importantly, it will take more trust—the trust that people are aware of their problems and are creative enough to solve them when given the right resources. People need opportunities, connections, and education to learn more about life’s possibilities, not handouts, performative sympathy, and empty promises.”
― Danielle Hawa Tarigha, Uplift and Empower: A Guide To Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation

“Working closely with recipients and understanding the needs of others requires a level of trust, credibility, and closeness that community leaders are best positioned to develop.

Community leaders can serve as mentors, communicators, and friends who represent the values and priorities most important to the populations they support.

At this level of giving, customizing aid to the specific needs of individuals becomes a natural byproduct of the types of relationships formed.”
― Danielle Hawa Tarigha, Uplift and Empower: A Guide To Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation

“Extreme poverty isn’t just an African issue or an Asian issue or a South American issue. It is a global issue. Before flying overseas to help relieve poverty abroad, consider the poverty in your own backyard.

Every country on every continent has people impacted by poverty—whether it is relative or absolute. Bringing extreme poverty down to zero will take more trial and error, more methods, more innovation, and more communication. Most importantly, it will take more trust—the trust that people are aware of their problems and are creative enough to solve them when given the right resources.”
― Danielle Hawa Tarigha, Uplift and Empower: A Guide to Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation

“to be a good advisor, you have to set aside your own personal opinions and feelings in a kind of detachment or camouflage – since self-interest is incompatible with objectivity – and avoid the limelight. Maintained over years, this steady, watchful, guarded attitude had become a way of life for me – one in which I constantly looked out for pitfalls, anticipated threats coming over the horizon, and readied myself to move and adapt at a moment’s notice and melt from the picture. Was it possible that that I had blended too much into the background of my own life… blurring my own identity”
― Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare: A Memoir