For those of you who’ve never logged on here before (Welcome 😎 ) I’m a conflict nerd, by which I mean a professional humanitarian peacebuilder. I’m sort of based in the UK, and have spent the last six years working in Central and West Africa, specialising in managing complex peacebuilding projects for international Non-Government Organisations […]
So what would you do with €700 million?
I love cathedrals: the spaciousness, the stone flag floors and rising columns, archways and sensual stained glass. The echoes of history, walls soaked in hymns and chanting, the overall aura of something sacred that often makes me want to kneel and pray in gratitude for everything I have. Whenever I go to a new city, […]
The Better Story, and why Samos Volunteers needs people like you
A refugee camp, especially if you’ve never been to one, probably sounds like hell on earth: crammed with unwashed, desperate people living in flimsy, flapping tents, surrounded by insufficient, filthy toilets, human waste, mounds of stinking rubbish, rats and snakes, while forced to wait in long rowdy queues for barely edible food packages. The whole […]
Self-build for refugees, a sobering tale of desperate innovation
I’m in touch with a young man in prison: he has been living in the refugee camp on the Isle of Samos (see photo). He took part, in fact led, some of the recent demonstrations by camp residents against the appalling conditions in the camp. At the same time, he lost his second appeal for […]
