For years and years HRI and our many affiliates have been working hard in all corners of the world doing workshops, seminars and engaging in various other activities that had massive impact on the lives of the poor and vulnerable and have, in the process, created and sustained vital industries of fake-ethnic eateries in dignified hotels and expat-only watering holes, to name just two of million other sectors essential to a decent life in the bubble.
HRI is naturally committed to exchanges of experiences and I personally believe that by sharing lessons learned and success stories we will become an even stronger and more “comprehensive” organization.
If you work for HRI or one of our affiliates (not sure? apply the “toolkit”) you must have some experiences you want to share, a lesson or two you have learned, a story you’d like to tell.
To facilitate the exchange of such materials I have decided to put out this call for abstracts – please email your story and over the coming days I will post the better ones right here, with the level of credit/ acknowledgement you request.
In order to select the best ones, I will ask Nathan, one of our interns (currently working on a team of eight tasked with compiling a global newsletter containing unreadable articles and underexposed, blurred pictures of HRI seminars, distributed straight to the spam folders of many of our affiliates) to skim over some of the submissions and pick the ones dealing with topics that are currently in favour with our donors. We’ll then select a few that refer to strategic countries for HRI and tell everyone the selection was done by a panel of “peers” based on objective criteria.
We’ll then put all of them in a “repository", which is another word for an obscure folder on our website, available for later (and unlikely) consultation to all, and call the whole affair a success in inter-agency exchange of experiences.
Please submit your “abstract” at alden dot kurtz at gmail dot com.
And please spread the word – for credibility with our stakeholders, it's important we can tell everyone that we had a very diverse pool of “abstracts” to choose from.
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Dr. Kurtz!
ReplyDeleteAnd here I was wondering how to make enough money for the expensive Easter holidays. Trip to the village and all, you understand. I am glad to see that business is treating you well, and that it is time for the unreadable pamphlets to be produced and 'disseminated' again.
I would be delighted to come up with a few touching anecdotes, if you would be so kind as to forward the list of favorable topics. I have heard that haitian children, albinism, climate change and whales are hot topics, but it has been so very long i could use some direction.
I look forward to hearing from you soon, to discuss a fair and dignified fee for my services...
Warm regards,
La Negresse.
Negresse:
ReplyDeleteWe'll be delighted to be able to share with our donors and stakeholders any story you may have. You understand that as our executive director of diversity, you will easily make the top list for obvious reasons - in most donors’ books "diversity" trumps fade topics. As for that holiday, depending on the topic you chose, we can probably find a suitable forum for you to present a 78-slide PowerPoint in your 15 allocated minutes, complete with the opportunity to share fake apologies with the audience about "running behind the schedule" and “not being a technical person” as a thinly veiled attempt at saying "i am a very busy person that has loads of important things to say".
We’ll then partner up with the organizers (most likely a HRI affiliate) and make a deal about “mobilizing resources” for this important exchange of success stories. Nathan the intern will eventually “follow up” with the customary conference newsletter, blurred pictures under the HRI logo and all.
In short – please do send a submission, we’ll take it from there.
Dear Dr Kurtz,
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your organisation's Call for Papers; we were delighted to receive your email even though we are not too sure who you are, but because we are all in the same Community of Practice we thought we would reply in person.
This is an automatically generated email though, because none of us are in the office. Why the fuck would we want to do that? No, a bit of work that came in requiring one of us, but because we are all a bit dim we decided this required the 7-strong office to man-up, and 'relocate' to Monrovia for 10 days. Because The Donor is a bit dim too they totally bought it and I am currently doing an evaluation of the gendered dimensions of security sector reform and in its implications for young boys in rural areas in terms of impact on their mother's ability to cook rice.
Unfortunately we will not be submitting an abstract on this occasion due to the volume of emails we receive. And I guess the 'amount of work' (in case the The Donors are watching).
Chrissy Von Ramplehorn
BA Communication Studies
MA Gender in the City (Dissertation: Discourse Analysis of Sarah Jessica Parker's shoe collection)
Women Action Network for Knowledge
(WANK)