Category: Blog (Page 7 of 7)

Partnership Africa Canada reaches into 30-years of archives with Carleton and CNHH

August 26, 2016 / Sean Eedy

by Zuzia Danielski

As Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, welcoming a growing team and expanding programs, there is no better time to take stock of our roots.

With the retirement of PAC’s long-serving Executive Director in 2015, it became crucial to document the organization’s three decades of history in order to preserve institutional memory, share it with the newest members of our team, and ensure the principles that PAC was founded on continue to be integrated across all programs.

1984: The Parable of Ethiopian Famine and Foreign Aid

May 11, 2016 / Sean Eedy

by Nassisse Solomon

Ethiopia has recently resurfaced in international headlines, in light of yet another looming apocalyptic scale famine. It is being widely reported that Ethiopia is facing its worst drought in 50 years. [1] A result of three failed rainy seasons, coupled with an El Nino effect warming the Pacific Ocean and affecting global weather patterns.[2] Changes in weather patterns that have resulted in punishing heat waves and drought throughout the horn of Africa region, and in Ethiopia becoming one of the worst afflicted countries.[3] With just weeks remaining before the start of the main cropping season in the country, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is calling for urgent funding to assist farmers in sowing their fields to abate drought stricken areas from falling deeper into hunger and food insecurity.[4] With a future saddled by the “uncertainty of what nature has called down upon it”[5], Ethiopia, as CBC’s Margaret Evans among many others have characterized it, is once again “on the edge.”[6] Continue reading

CNHH in Conversation with Dr. James Orbinski

April 26, 2016 / Sean Eedy

by Christine Chisholm and Will Tait

On March 24, 2016 Dr. James Orbinski, former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières, scholar of global health and practicing physician was invited by Carleton University’s Bachelor of Global and International Studies (BGInS) to present the keynote lecture for the official launch of the program. Dr. Chris Brown, director of BGInS, kindly arranged for a meeting with Orbinski before the lecture with CNHH members Dr. Dominique Marshall and PhD candidates Christine Chisholm and Will Tait from Carleton’s Department of History.

“Eye-opening if not revelatory”: Teaching and Learning Humanitarian History

April 1, 2016 / Sean Eedy

by Sarah Glassford

Before taking this course I thought that humanitarianism was just

a nice way of asking for money. You donate and someone tries

to solve a problem. But through the readings and the emergency

relief assignment/exercise it has become clear that the job is less

straightforward than that. – Haley K.

Those of us who research and write in the area of humanitarian history are well aware of the complexities of aid, both on the giving and receiving ends of the equation. But when we have a chance to teach that history, what preconceptions do our students bring to the classroom, and what do they take away with them at the end of the course? Continue reading

Investment for Development: The Plodding History of Canadian Development Finance

March 3, 2016 / Sean Eedy

by Jill Campbell-Miller

posted jointly with Active History.

In the area of development finance Canada has lagged behind its international partners in the G7, only promising to establish a development finance institution (DFI) in the 2015 budget, some 67 years after the UK established the first DFI. This might come as surprise, since blending the interests of domestic Canadian businesses and official development assistance (ODA) has been an objective of the Canadian government since the early days of aid-giving in the 1950s, to the delight of some, and the dismay of others.

German Diaspora Aid in the Post-War and its Meaning for Today.

January 27, 2016 / Sean Eedy

by Sean Eedy

In the current climate surrounding the refugee crisis in Europe, the European Union is struggling not only with the relocation of these refugees, but also with feeding and housing these refugees and who should pay for it all. At the moment, Germany seems to be the preferred destination of the majority of these refugees and, given the relative economic strength of Germany in Europe and their leading position in EU affairs and institutions, this may perhaps be the most tenable situation. Germany has a system in place to resettle these refugees across the state in proportion to the ability of each Laend to sustain them, but this will become taxing on even the strongest economy and requires the aid of supranational institutions and NGOs. This migrant crisis and the accompanying stresses on German infrastructure have since sparked resurgence in Neo-Nazi activity even before the November 2015 attacks in Paris and Beirut.

Virtual Visit to the Offices of the Canadian Hunger Foundation on the Eve of its Closing, August 2015

September 22, 2015 / Aid History

Carleton PhD candidate Will Tait visited the CHF building just before it closed. Click here for slide show:

And here is the post announcing the closing. Here is an article in Embassy on the forces that lead to the closing: “Anatomy if an NGO closure“.

Library and Archives Canada hold the CHF fonds. Here is the Description of the fonds. They will collect the remaining archives. The CNHH is working with them on a project to rescue and identify a large collection of unidentified pictures.

The Freedom from Hunger Project commemorates some of their history.

And Matthew Bunch, member of the network and historian, wrote his doctoral thesis on the topic: “All Roads Lead to Rome: Canada, the Freedom From Hunger Campaign, and the Rise of NGOs, 1960-1980“, University of Waterloo, 2007. He has posted “A Short History of the Canadian Hunger Foundation” on this website.

My Visit to Plan Canada’s Head Offices in Toronto

August 8, 2015 / Carlos Uriel Contreras Flores

By Carlos Uriel Contreras Flores

Hello,

In this post I will let you know my experience in Toronto at the offices of Plan Canada, a visit I made last week.

Some weeks ago, Professor Dominique Marshall asked me to check some irreplaceable documents that Plan Canada had in their offices in Toronto, and that are part of the historical archives of the organization. These are basically letters and photo albums of some of their most important and lasting donors and sponsors.