I just love this talk. It is perhaps one of the most important TED talks ever related to the field of ethics and doing good. Ernesto Sirolli's work as an enterprise facilitator is well known around the world. In this talk he shares both his early experiences in what doesn't work in Africa, as well…
Speaking truth to power
Over the past few years I have worked with and met a number of social entrepreneurs. I have been struck by how many have come into the work that they do through perceiving injustice, inequity or inefficiency elsewhere. Most social entrepreneurs I know are not new to 'doing good' - it is in their blood.…
Freebirthing and the ethics of judgement
In many ways ethics can be about making judgements or assessment about what is right or wrong, good or bad. But are all judgements the same? Recently there has been an ongoing story in the press about a mother who lost her child in during a freebirth. This event was naturally a deeply tragic one…
A not so lonely planet: the ethics of international volunteering
I'm sure this topic has been explored and written about extensively, and I'm keen to find other views on the ethical dimensions of this field. I was recently pitched a business idea by a young woman who was keen to take the staff of private sector companies to developing countries to volunteer in orphanages. This…
Ethics without anger or taking sides
Two questions: can you discuss ethics without taking sides? and can you explore ethics without anger? So far I have received some good feedback on this blog, but one question keeps coming up: when are you going to take sides? When I look around the ethics community, I see how we think this way. It…
What’s your hidden curriculum?
In education there is a term called the hidden curriculum, which refers to unintended outcomes or lessons taught in the classroom. These mostly encompass the soft stuff like values, beliefs, behaviours and norms that are transmitted through the social environment or the behaviour of the educator. As a teacher a number of years ago, I…
Create your own rule
Yesterday I was privileged to meet a couple by the name of Mike and Rose Kennedy, with whom along with others we explored the possibilities of group coaching. We explored loads of topics that will probably become about ten blog posts. The one for today is a deceptively simple and powerful idea about how and…
The world doesn’t need to be changed
A conversation with my friend Ehon on the weekend prompted this post. I shared with him a story of a girl I recently met in San Francisco who by way of introducing herself, asked me a question: "So what are you doing to save the world?" This kind of question usually grates on me, and…
The ethics of rescuing food
I want to explore the idea of rescue as an approach to changemaking, and why some aspects of the 'rescue industry' have hidden ethical challenges. This is a follow on from my post on how to rescue a racehorse, which explored a new rescue-based idea to tackle problems in the horse-racing industry. Rescuing others is…
How to rescue a racehorse
About a month ago a guy pitched me his idea in an elevator (yes, it actually happens). His idea was to 'rescue a racehorse'. Actually, he wanted to not just rescue one racehorse, he wanted to rescue thousands of them. He explained to me what he saw as a problem of racehorses being slaughtered for…
How To Do Good 