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IDS partners Guardian in new Global Development website
28 September 2010
IDS is set to play an important role in a new website, published by The Guardian, which focuses on global development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
IDS has signed up to be a content exchange Network Partner for the Guardian Global Development site while IDS Board of Trustees Chair Richard Manning is a member of site's Advisory Panel, which also includes Paul Collier, Lord Malloch-Brown, Jeffrey Sachs and Amartya Sen.
IDS is also supporting the development of the site's Campaigns and Resources section, where readers can learn more about specific MDGs through further reading and by getting involved in local campaigns.
Ground-breaking media focus on development
IDS Director Lawrence Haddad expressed his delight at seeing the recognition of "development" as a major area for media coverage, alongside national and world news, politics, education, society and science. Writing in his blog, Development Horizons, Professor Haddad states that IDS is proud to be involved in a partnership with a major media outlet, and he hopes the new Guardian site will provide inspiration to other major media outlets such as the Times of India and the Mail and Guardian in South Africa.
Developed with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, what's different about the Global Development site is that it features analysis, opinions and news stories on development in one place. It also provides an easy-to-use dataset aggregated from international agencies such as the IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations as well as from development research, such as IDS Research Fellow Andy Sumner's work on the new bottom billion poorest people.
Global problems require global solutions
Working with over 250 partners around the world, IDS hopes its contributions to the Global Develpment website will continue to raise the profile of Southern voices and perspectives on development. Under the exchange agreement, the Guardian has already republished news of our research on the UK public's opinion towards aid, on sexuality and the development agenda, and on the distorted picture performance indicators can paint of progress being made on the MDGs.
In addition, IDS Knowledge Services, with almost twenty years experience in development information intermediary work, played a critical role in identifying further reading on key issues, under each MDG, and local advocacy campaigns, both in the UK and around the world.
The media as stakeholders in development
IDS looks to engage with the media, not just as channels through which we transmit our research findings, but as stakeholders themselves who have an impact on social development. Earlier this year, we ran a new journalism competition, with support from the Communication Initiative, aimed at journalists based in low income countries whose writing focuses on poverty alleviation, rights, health and other Millennium Development Goals. IDS also convened a debate in June, held at the Royal Society and aimed at journalists, on how development journalism might move beyond 'white man to the rescue', and make a positive contribution to overcoming global poverty. The debate was based on forthcoming research about the media.
Image credit: G.M.B. Akash / Panos
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