03 January

Building Resilience for 2012
At a recent networking event I was asked to share some of my thoughts on Building Resilience based on living for many years in another culture. Moving to another culture and living there for an extended period of time leads to ‘culture shock’ – a sense of bewilderment, insecurity and disillusionment. It has this affect [...]

12:42 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

28 December

Profile or Performance?
At the recent award for Sports Personality of the Year in the UK there was some controversy raised as there were no women on the final shortlist of 10. The BBC’s programme Women’s Hour discussed the situation and interviewed Claire Spalding, a well-known sports reporter and presenter. She looked at the main newspapers that day [...]

05:14 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

02 December

What’s in a name?
When we lived in Tanzania it surprised me to hear that some children were called ‘Tabu’ which means ‘distress, misery or difficult conditions’. This was usually because their mother had experienced problems during the birth.  There were other children who were more fortunate, they were called ‘Bahati’ which means ‘luck’. I often wondered how having [...]

07:55 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

22 November

The Power and Fear of Belonging
The first time I asked for volunteers, two people willingly raised their hands. The next time, not one single person in the group would agree to volunteering. What had happened? I was doing a session on Diversity with 16-18 year olds on a ‘Get ready for Work’ scheme. I wanted to show them the strength of the power [...]

03:28 GMT  |  Read comments(0)

31 August

Bribery and Culture
On a recent Economist blog – Blighty – about the new Bribery Act which came into effect in the UK in July this year one person commented: “Indeed it is ultimately helpful to eliminate bribes in poorer countries, as their corruption is a major (though not the only) factor in keeping them poor.” Also, in [...]

06:50 GMT  |  Read comments(0)