The Life

How to become an aid professional

by David Week on 05 November 2010

First: you need to know what an aid “professional” might look like, and the hazards (and potential strengths) of being an aid “amateur.” There’s been a small debate on the blogs recently, and Saundra of Good Intentions has posted a cool summary of the results, here. Everyone starts at some time as an amateur, and learns [...]

Poverty is not misery

by David Week on 21 September 2010

Many events and situations can make people miserable: natural disasters, in which they lose their homes, livelihoods, and loved ones internment in refugee camps with uncertain futures and time frames conflicts in which they are daily put in fear of their lives. But poverty, in and on of itself, does not cause misery. I met a [...]

Finding a job in development

by David Week 13 September 2010

I’m planning to write a series of posts about building a career as an architect in development. That’s in the pipeline. In the mean time, I thought I would post a set of sites where you can find jobs in development. Saundra over at Good Intentions Are Not Enough is putting together a comprehensive list [...]

Read the full article →

Is there a “third culture” mindset? (And do we need it?)

by David Week 12 September 2010

Kudos Thanks to Desiree Adaway whose tweet comments on A life without borders prompted this follow-up. Living among worlds For many years, I took the kind of multicultural upbringing I described in A life without borders for granted. About ten years ago, I found the book Third culture kids: the experience of growing up among worlds. The [...]

Read the full article →

A beautiful country

by David Week 17 August 2010

Every profession has its ups and downs, its highs and lows. Sometimes the highs are both metaphoric, and literal: like the day I was asked to a accompany a team to inspect potential school construction sites in Lesotho. The helicopter allows them to do in a day what would take 10 days by road and [...]

Read the full article →

A life without borders

by David Week 14 August 2010

Snapshot of my life I was born in Chile. At the age of three, I moved two New York for six years (with my parents, of course!). Then six months in Jakarta, just before the 1965 coup which saw between half a million and million people killed. Three and half years in New Zealand. Then back [...]

Read the full article →

About “Architecture for Development”

by David Week 27 April 2010

Why this blog Below, I’ve pasted my professional “about” blurb from my CV, written in some version of bureaucratese. It serves as a potted history of my professional life, and provides some insight, I guess, into my professional persona. But I’m not blogging to further my professional career, which is doing just fine. Here are [...]

Read the full article →