The WatER Podcast: Recent Episodes
Robbie Venis
The podcast for the research project Water Education Research (WatER), based out of Carleton University. See our website at www.WatERCarleton.org
This is Episode 2 of the WatER Podcast, where we discuss how Water, Education Research is introducing Ceramic Water Filters into the rural community of Longido in Tanzania
This podcast episode is the first of a 3 part series that goes through the WatER research project in depth. This episode focuses on the challenges facing the residents of Longido, a rural community in Northeaster Tanzania, in regards to water access and quality. Learn more at our website at www.WatERCarleton.org
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I am very excited to partner this week with World Vision Canada‘s new Podcast, In Progress, to talk about World Food Day! Please check out In Progress on iTunes, Soundcloud or wherever else you find your podcasts and enjoy some very interesting content! The episode played for you today is called: Food is Community – I Taught Her How To Make French Toast
Description: This World Food Day, we sit down with well-known chef Dennis Prescott to talk food and how his love of sharing meals led him to Joyce Kilpimo in Kenya. A hunger free world is one where meals are shared, community is fostered and there’s always enough to go around, especially for moms, children and babies.
Don’t forget to find us on Soundcloud and the Google Play Store and donate to my research project at futurefunder.ca!!
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This episode is my conversation with Dr. Enock Dankyi from the University of Ghana in the Legon Region near Accra. Dr. Dankyi is a lecturer in the Department of Chemistry and is alumnus of the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship - Advanced Scholars Program. Under this scholarship, Dr. Dankyi studied at Carleton University to progress his research into neonicotinoids in fertilizers used on cocoa crops in Ghana, and how its usage affects bee populations; this was our topic of conversation in this episode. I learned a lot and Dr. Dankyi is a very interesting and knowledgeable individual, so I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! You can learn more about Enock here (https://carleton.ca/qes/people/enock-dankyi/) or contact him by email at edankyi@ug.edu.gh
Welcome to the first episode of Season 2 of All About Aid! Though I have taken a small hiatus, I plan to kick this season into gear again and bring some new and interesting interviews with some very fascinating people.
This episode is an interview that I recorded with Dr. Teddy Samy, the Director of the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs. Dr. Samy teaches courses in economic development, international assistance and quantitative methods. His broad research interests are in the areas of international trade and development economics. More specifically, he has worked on trade and labor standards; debt relief; and aid allocation and aid effectiveness in fragile states. Some of his current work is examining the role of emerging donors; the allocation of aid for trade; and the relationship between taxation and development. In this episode, we spoke mostly about aid effectiveness and the appropriate metrics needed to quantify the value of aid to a given recipient country. This interview was very insightful and Dr. Samy is a fascinating individual to speak with, so I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!
Hello Everyone and welcome back to a new season of All About Aid! For this episode, I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Steve Mason, the Director of Programming at the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada (AKFC). In this episode, we spoke about Steve's path to his current position, some of the projects and initiatives in operation for AKFC, as well as the philosophy behind the foundation's practices around the world. It was a really great conversation and I feel I learned a lot from him, so I hope that you all do as well. For those who are interested, Steve highly recommends the blog, From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green from Oxfam, as well as the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.
Welcome back everyone! After two weeks of intensive work, I have finally been able to publish this really awesome episode with Caroline Montpetit and Mark Leclair of Farm Radio International! Farm Radio is an NGO based in Ottawa, Canada that focuses on providing support to local radio stations in rural communities all across Africa. Using ICT and the philosophies of impact-based communications, Farm Radio International works to empower communities and bring a voice to the often neglected areas of the African popular identity. You can learn more about them here!
As for my guests, Caroline is a gender specialist and the Senior Programmer for the Farm Radio West Africa portfolio, so she helps develop radio programs for stations in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Senegal. Mark is the Knowledge Management Team Lead where he works to develop strategies to better amplify the voices of radio listeners in various communities and use data and ICT to target their needs and make programming as relevant as possible to each unique setting. I really loved talking to the two of them and I think it was a really great episode so I hope you enjoy! Don't forget to like and comment on Facebook and directly on the site, and follow me on Twitter at @allaboutaidFBTR! I hope you enjoy!!
Welcome back to All About Aid! This week, I sat down to speak with Lance Hadley. Lance is a PhD candidate at The Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, studying geospatial determinants of violence and conflict in periphery regions. He is also the managing director of iAffairs Canada, the web developer for the Canadian International Development Platform, and the Chief Technology Officer for Sauti. Sauti is a social enterprise focused on improving profits and social conditions for cross-border traders in Kenya and Uganda. This episode, we speak about the work that Lance is doing with Sauti and how technology is a valuable tool for economic empowerment in under-represented communities. We also speak about some ethical questions involved in running a social enterprise and how Sauti manages those questions. Lance also recommends that listeners read the book "The Lords of Poverty" by Graham Hancock, as it helped shape his views on international aid, and then further allowed him to rebut some arguments from the book later in his learning.
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @allaboutaidFBTR and on Facebook and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode!
Hey Everyone! For the past few months, I've been in a podcast competition for the International Forum hosted by Farm Radio International, WUSC and CECI and I am posting the episode here! In this episode I talk about access to safe drinking water in Longido, Tanzania (the community I work with for my thesis project), and the challenges that some traditional Massai women face in their daily commutes to fetch water. We then come back to Canada and speak with The Assembly of First Nations and the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan to learn about the issues that many First Nations communities deal with in regards to safe water. This was a really cool experience and it gave me the opportunity to meet some awesome people, including my co-producers, Jaime Little and Clara Moita, and our mentor, JP Davidson of Pop up Podcasting.
I'd like to thank Virginia Taylor for helping to organize interviews in Longido, Joachim Laizer and Christina Sumayani for translating and all of our guests for participating. Thank you so much!
This week I spoke with Dr. Evan Hoffman from the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiations (CIIAN) and Concorde Inc. to discuss conflict prevention and resolution, as well as international negotiations. We talk about his career path into the field of conflict prevention, as well as some of the lessons that he has learned over his years working in field, specifically from a project he conducted in the small West African Country of Guinea Bissau. We also discuss how conflict resolution and prevention skills can be helpful in your personal and professional lives, regardless of your career. You can find more information about CIIAN here (http://www.ciian.org/) and more about Dr. Hoffman here (http://www.ciian.org/instructors1.shtml). He also recommends that anybody interested in learning more about conflict resolution and prevention should go to http://www.beyondintractability.org/. Don't forget to follow us on twitter (@allaboutaidFBTR) and check out our website at allaboutaid.blog for more episodes!
Dr. Melissa Marschke is an Associate Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She studies the interactions between humans and the environment, discussing issues such as coastal livelihoods, environmental governance and resource management. Her most recent research involves the examination of labour issues within the seafood sector in Southeast Asia, as well as urban climate resilience and social well-being in coastal areas. She is also the author of the 2012 book "Life, Fish and Mangroves: Resource Governance in Coastal Cambodia" (https://press.uottawa.ca/life-fish-and-mangroves.html). In this episode we spoke about labor and social well-being in Thailand's seafood sector, the impacts of climate change on human rights, and what Canadians can do to be socially conscious consumers. All of the things we spoke about can be found below:
1) Dr. Marschke's website: https://melissamarschke.wordpress.com/ 2) OceanWise: http://seafood.ocean.org/ 3) David Suzuki: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/oceans/science/sustainable-fisheries-and-aquaculture/seachoice-canadas-sustainable-seafood-program/ 4) Labor App: https://www.dol.gov/dol/apps/ilab.htm
This week, I sat down with Dr. Chris Huggins from the University of Ottawa. Dr. Huggins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Development and Global Studies, and his research focuses on agricultural development and rural livelihoods in Africa, particularly in post-conflict zones. He holds a PhD in Geography from Carleton University in Ottawa, and a Master's Degree in Environmental Studies from Strathclyde University in the UK. He has also worked with Human Rights Watch and the United Nations, and has published in various internationally recognized journals.
In this episode, we spoke about his new book, Agricultural Reform in Rwanda: Authoritarianism, Markets, and Zones of Governance, which will be available in October at http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo27376730.html . We also discussed ideas like target based development, Western influence on policy reforms in Africa and many more. Chris recommends that listeners read "Seeing Like a State" by James C. Scott (https://www.amazon.ca/Seeing-Like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153) to learn more about the critiques of top-down development and expert approaches to policy development.
You can learn more about Dr. Huggins by following him on Twitter at @ChrisDHuggins or by checking out his website at https://chrishugginsphd.wordpress.com
Welcome to Episode 2 of All About Aid. In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Susan Spronk, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa in International Development and Global Studies. Susan specializes in gender and governance and global governance, with a particular focus on Latin America and the debate over private and public control of various services. In this episode, we spoke about the water sector in particular and tried to go over some of the history behind the privatization reforms of the 1980's and 90's. You can learn more about Professor Spronk at https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/#!/members/757. Please be sure to like and comment on this episode, and provide any suggestions that you may have! I do apologize for the sound quality on this episode, but we were having some technical difficulties at the time of recording. Thanks so much and I hope you enjoy!
Welcome to All About Aid! Here is a short introduction episode to give some context for what All About Aid is all about! Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and stay tuned for more episodes coming out soon!