International Development · Community · Place
Field notes, essays, and community voices from two decades working alongside communities across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond — because good development starts with listening.
This isn't a blog about the "developing world" viewed from afar — it's built from years spent living and working alongside the communities it covers.
About
I'm an international development practitioner who has spent the last 7+ years working alongside communities on migration, public health, education, and livelihoods programs — from rural clinics in East Africa to urban resilience projects in Southeast Asia. This is where I write about what actually works, what doesn't, and the people who taught me the difference.
— Anna
Latest field notes
Essays and dispatches on community-led change, from wherever the work takes me.
Real, lasting change rarely starts with an outside plan — it starts with the people who'll live with the outcome.
Why the programs that transfer best across borders are usually the ones that were never designed to.
A small shift in language changed how an entire district talked to us — and how we listened back.
Ten years on, what the data — and the borrowers themselves — actually say.
Building trust in a community that has every reason not to trust you back.
After the flood, the community didn't wait for us — they'd already started teaching again.
“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”
— Paulo Freire