The market meltdown and voluntary sector: News media beginning to take notice

In a previous post I criticized Canadian news media, key government departments and leading non-profit organizations for lagging in their reporting and public commentary about the impacts of the global economic slowdown on the voluntary sector. Although not all have begun to speak publicly, kudos to those that have done so. Among news media, the [...]

Greening Corporate Reputation

Canada’s agenda-setting newspaper The Globe & Mail yesterday memorialized Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1962) as one of the world’s 50 greatest reads, praising its role in stimulating greater public understanding about science and helping to shape the modern environmental movement. I’ve been thinking a lot about the book lately, with 2 graduate students working on issues [...]

iWatch: The Power of Surveillance in your Pocket

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

In the discourse about surveillance, the Big Brother trope is king.  Popular culture provides us with recognizable scripts in which to locate our own anxieties and uncertainties about the present, even though the reality of everyday life is often more complex and paradoxical than can be explained [...]

When Risk, Fear and Corporate Power Collide

An interesting blog by Wired magazine reporter Brandon Keim suggests that the recent decision of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to put the American people on “alert” for an anthrax attack has more to do with protecting the Bush administration’s cozy relationship with manufacturers of anthrax vaccines than protecting the nation from a bio-terrorist attack. Project BioShield [...]

The Food Security & Safety Puzzle

One of the current era’s most pressing political, economic and public health issues is food security and safety. Recent outbreaks of food-borne illness in Canada have brought this home in a powerful and highly resonant way, yet there is much more to the issue than the increased potential for infection and disease. Costs are also [...]

Silence in Canada as International Charities Feel Market Crunch

In June 2008, Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), a London, UK-based international development charity, issued a media statement urging City employees to “swap their six figure salaries” for voluntary work in the developing world. Citing looming prospects about labour market uncertainty, VSO argued that volunteering in the poorest parts of the world will deliver more than just a [...]

China’s PR Problem

China’s efforts to improve its image overseas continues to suffer setbacks. Two news stories yesterday threaten to confirm the picture that many in the West have of the People’s Republic as a country where citizens exercise little political and intellectual freedom, let alone freedom over reproductive rights.
First, Reuters reports that the city government in Shijiazhuang, home to the [...]

Watching You Work

The American Management Association released earlier this year its annual Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey. From using webcams to enabling spyware, the study found (surprise!) that more employers are monitoring the workplace practices of their staff.
There are lots of reasons employers say they need to play Big Brother, some of which are outlined in this online news story. The most [...]

Volunteering Gets Extreme Makeover

One of the biggest challenges facing voluntary organizations is the recruitment of young people, as either employees or volunteers. Youth are a curious and misunderstood demographic. While politicos lament their unwillingness to participate in the electoral process as evidence of political apathy, disengagement and intensified individualization, we would do well to remember that politics involves [...]