Resource Category: Defining Key Concepts

May 2024

Towards the ‘Beloved Community’

Based on the work of Afsan Bhadelia PhD, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA (As of August 2022: Department of Public Health, College of Health and Human Science, Purdue University, USA); Leah Odle-Benson, The Stephen Lewis Foundation, Canada; and Stephen Connor PhD, Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA), USA, the paper explores the question, can we build the ‘beloved community’ as the ultimate expression of the systemic transformations we seek in the world today?

August 2022

Understanding Resilience in International Development

In the discourse of development and philanthropy, the term resilience is used across the spectrum between two poles. In some contexts, resilience means weathering the transition to change (such as for the three case studies mentioned above), while in others it is used to protect the structural frames of the status quo and so to absolve the state and other actors of responsibility. In this paper, we explore this paradox. The goal is to develop an understanding of resilience in development and philanthropy so that it can be applied more meaningfully in our work.

January 2021

Beyond us and them

Social movements are increasingly important to the process of change, but their relationship with institutional philanthropy has often proven a difficult one. What are these difficulties and how can they be resolved? Drawing on a recent paper by Halima Mahomed, Institutional philanthropy and popular organising in Africa : some initial reflections from social movement activists,…

October 2020

Measuring what matters

Measuring what matters is a consultation paper designed to advance a conversation about measurement 
in civil society and the goal is to identify more meaningful approaches to organizational learning and accountability. The paper is based on a series of parallel and intersecting conversations, online and in-person, over a two-year period with 130 people from civil…

February 2020

Leadership and Development

Although widely used, and viewed as an important ingredient in successful philanthropy and development, there is no common understanding of what people mean by the term leadership or how its value is demonstrated in practice. In March 2018, when PSJP ran an exploratory webinar for civil society practitioners to identify hot topics they wanted to…

December 2019

Understanding sustainability

This is the fourth paper in PSJP’s Defining Key Concepts series and it looks at the concept of ‘sustainability’ in development and philanthropy. (The first paper, published in October 2018, looked at the concept of ‘Dignity’ and the second, published in March 2019, looked at ‘Leadership’. The third paper published last month (Nov 2019) was…

November 2019

Measuring social change

This is the third paper in PSJP’s Defining Key Concepts series and it looks at the concept of ‘measuring social change’ in development and philanthropy. (The first paper, published in October 2018, looked at the concept of ‘Dignity’ and the second, published in March 2019, looked at ‘Leadership’.) This paper draws on three webinar sessions…

October 2018

Dignity and Development

This paper looks at the idea of ‘dignity’ and forms part of PSJP’s series on ‘defining key concepts’ in development and philanthropy. The 1948 Declaration of Human Rights enshrined dignity as the central goal of development, yet the term is not clearly defined, which makes it difficult to pursue and impossible to measure. Different people…