Empowered girls, empowered futures” – It is not a dream!

At the Aydın Dogan Foundation we have been working on the education and empowerment of girls for more than 15 years now. The UN’s declaration of October 11th as the International Day of the Girl Child in 2012 has given us a new opportunity to bring into focus the… Read More

What does a mission-driven HR department look like?

his post originally appeared on the Ford Foundation’s excellent “Equals change blog“ At the Ford Foundation, we believe it’s important to model the kind of change we hope to see in the world. And so our efforts to disrupt inequality must start in our own organization. Read More

The Development Set and its role in perpetuating poverty

‘Although we move with the better classes, our thoughts are always with the masses.’ (Ross Coggins, 1976) In 1976, an exasperated development worker, Ross Coggins, attending his umpteenth futile meeting to discuss poverty in a fine hotel, penned a poem entitled ‘The Development Set‘. Several years later I joined a leading… Read More

Can foundations contribute to social cohesion in Europe?

The following is a speech made by Dr Rien van Gendt during the Humanity in Action International Conference, which took place in Strasbourg from 5-8 July 2018: I want to explore with you how foundations can contribute to the European agenda of democracy, diversity and social cohesion. What is the… Read More

Helping amplify your work on diversity

Writing about being a model or an exemplar is tricky. Neither the Trust as an organisation, nor I as its Chief Executive, are models. We are more straw effigies that are flawed and can be easily knocked down. That is not being falsely modest. I am proud of what we… Read More

Building a strong future for European science: Brexit and beyond

Decades of cooperation have made Europe a great place for research. But as science and politics change, we need to adapt to keep up. Europe must work together to secure our global scientific leadership. As Wellcome heard at our summit of European research leaders recently “research is the only way to… Read More

Working our way towards a Single Market for Philanthropy

This blog first appeared on the Alliance magazine website and Euractiv.com blog Growing nationalism and deepening populist sentiment across Europe make it all the more urgent to bolster our shared European values. Civil society, which includes philanthropy, is essential in this. But if civil society… Read More