I LOVE THIS POSTER

This poster from Whitman College says it all - I finally have something to twitter about! If this was a competition for best disaster reduction messages, this would be a winner- Let's see some more! Guest bloggers welcome! mpetal AT imagins.com

THE HORRORS OF ‘DEV-SPEAK’

From guest blogger: Ian Davis July 2009

“.......This hen-house language might not matter if it were confined to the business world. But it has escaped, like some malign virus , and is infecting us all. I would love to claim that the BBC, with its proud history of championing good English, is fighting back. Sadly, it is not. We have been suborned. A colleague of mine interviewed a young man who was applying for a job in his department. He asked him what he had been doing in the few months since he left Cambridge. He was told ‘Proactively networking’. He should have been thrown out of the building on the spot or, better still, publicly executed, his body left to hang in the lobby of the Television Centre as a warning to others. Instead he gave him the job. The young man is now, I have no doubt, a middle manager telling his colleagues how he can ‘progress’ his latest challenge,- or some such rubbish” John Humphrys (Introduction to Cochrane J. (2003) ‘Between You and I- A Little Book of Bad English’ Cambridge Icon Books

Some really horrible words/ expressions/ ‘managementspeak’/’socialsciencespeak’ jargon tortures the Queens, and Obama’s English. The ever expanding torrent fills the reports we hear on radio/TV or are obliged to read. This terminological jungle is a particularly pain within the development/ humanitarian community, and I not only have to read the stuff every day, suffer from it whenever I attend a conference but worse still, find myself unwittingly writing and speaking the same twisted language. I have put up with it, and alas perpetuated it, for all of 37 years and it has got to stop!

The jargon has a distinct following, a pair of examples: To relieve the boredom suffered in umpteen development conferences, a helpful friend- Geoff Payne who works in the low-cost housing/ urbanisation field , has invented a game called ‘Bingo’ (But... see the second PS). This required the development of a list of key words that of course had to include:
• Sustainability
• Stakeholder
• Holistic
• Gender sensitive
• HRD
• Indicators
• Bottom-up
• Empowerment.... etc. etc. etc.

Whenever a conference speaker gets up to share his (and its mainly men..!) pearls of wisdom the various Bingo Players in the conference hall have a checklist on their laps and when the speaker has used all the jargon on the list, the first of the competitors to recognise the achievement (this normally takes less than three minutes) has to climb on their seat and shout ‘BINGO’ very loudly . This has the electrifying effect of the platform speaker halting the flow of verbiage for a few seconds, while the prize winner is frog marched from the hall by conscientious minders.

My other example occurred in Angola when running a course on Disaster Management in 1994. As the course ended a local NGO director asked me “which words should I use to use in funding applications to ensure success?” In the subsequent, rather strange, conversation he told me that he had looked hard at the literature and felt that there were certain essential words or expressions to be sprinkled liberally throughout the text of any project funding application to International NGO’s , The UN or Donor Government Agencies.

In seeking confirmation that he had learned the language of development funding correctly, he produced a well worn list from his wallet, and it was no surprise that the list included:
• Sustainability
• Stakeholder
• Holistic
• Gender sensitive
• HRD
• Indicators etc.etc.etc.
In fact , when Geoff Payne showed me the rules of Bingo, the similarity of their lists made me wonder whether my Angolan student was in fact his co-author!

Therefore we, the undersigned, faithfully promise to cut ourselves away from the
world of the word merchants, in order to think and write with clarity and purpose,
and promise never, ever, to use such vocabulary again until our dying day, and we
promise to play the BINGO game in all future conferences , and insist that BINGO
checklists go in all future participant conference packs.....

The provisional list of no less than 93 examples of verbiage. (Additions/ Deletions welcome)
• Actualization
• Actualizing Interventions
• Access Funding
• At this moment in time...
• At this point in time....
• As of now...
• Basically
• Beaconicity
• Blue Sky Assessment (unless applied to meteorological analysis)
• Bottom-Up and Top-Down and Hands-On and Hands-Off
• Brainstorming
• Building on Best Practice
• Collateral Damage
• Common Approach Delivery Mechanisms
• Concretize (note the US spelling...)
• Conscientize (ditto..)
• Cross-Cutting Issues
• Data Mining
• Data Processing
• Delivering Objectives
• Descriptors
• Dialogue Mechanism
• Dialogue Teaching
• Diarise (this is when the Blackberries come out..)
• Disaggregate
• Double-loop learning (unless applied to aerobatics)
• Early Wins
• Ensuring Access (unless opening a door)
• Epigenic (?)
• Facilitator
• Facilitation
• Factor Analysis
• Factor-in and Factor-out
• Fault Line (unless applied to a seismic fault line)
• Flag-up
• Framework Parameters
• Gender Awareness
• Gender Sensitive
• Globalistic (makes this reader ‘go ballistic’...)
• Going forward
• Grassroots empowerment (but OK as a horticultural process to fertilise a lawn)
• Hands-On and Hands-Off
• Human Resource Development (HRD)
• Holistic
• In-Depth Analysis (unless applied to Scuba Diving)
• In-Tandem (unless applied to two people on the same bike)
• Interactive formulation
• Level Descriptor
• Level Playing Field (unless applied to a level playing field)
• Logarithmic
• Log Frame Analysis
• Low Hanging Fruit
• Macro and Micro everything
• Mainstream (unless applied to the middle of a river)
• Methodology
• Modalities
• Moving the Goalposts (unless at the end of the football season)
• North- South Interchange (but just as long as you don’t live in Australia)
• Participative Action
• Participatory
• Performance Indicator
• Platform (unless at a railway station)
• Proactive
• Proactive Networking
• Public/Private Partnerships (PPP)
• Rendition
• Revisiting Issues
• Seismic Impact (unless it is an earthquake)
• Sensitize
• Service Provider
• Silo (unless it is a Silo full of wheat)
• Sourcing the Inputs and Outsourcing the Outputs (Ugh)
• Special Service Provider (SSP)
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Stakeholder Partnership
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Stakeholder Management
• Stakeholder (unless applied to someone holding up a vertical wooden stake)
• Stretching the Envelope (unless applied to an attempt to place a large letter into a smaller envelope)
• Sustainable Livelihoods
• SWOT Analysis
• Take Forward
• Target (unless applied in archery)
• Tease Out
• Tokenism
• Tokenistic
• Thinking in Silos
• Thinking outside the Box (unless applied to someone giving serious thought with the Television switched off)
• Ticking the Boxes
• Toolkit (unless applied to a box of tools)
• Unpacking the issues
• Value Added
• Workshop (unless applied to a room where work takes place)
• Workshop Facilitation

CARD's blog

Please do follow CARD's blog. There are great posting on Couch Potato Preparedness. The new post explains how Sound of Music (1965) is a classic for sustainability and the sheer number of preparedness lessons. To see the whole thing check out: http://blog.cardcanhelp.org/

Anna Marie is thinking we need some new words to My Favorite Things. So here are a few words. I'm thinking everyone could contribute more, a few more tunes, and in no time - a Disaster Prevention Chorus.

(sing to the tune of My Favorite Things...)

Bolts to foundation for houses of wood
When the ground shakes they will stay where they should

L-brackets generously applied to bookcases
Chandeliers fastened, won’t fall on our faces

Columns and beams that are well-connected
Hold up the ceilings now we are protected

Symmetric design and continuous frame
reinforced concrete without any shame

Let’s add some verses and start up a chorus
Someday there will be no more need for us

Over to you!!

Eathquake Avenger

More on the ShakeOut International School Safety Observation Team to come.
I promise to post more often. So much happening, so little time to devote to sharing it...
But here's some nice coverage from MORE Magazine.

http://www.more.com/2009/4814-the-earthquake-avenger

GOOD Practice! Ye Zhiping

Thanks to the New York Times for its excellent coverage of this VERY important story. This is a story that goes to the heart of disaster prevention.
Below is an excerpt drawn from a touching, longer and very well-written parable by Milo Thornberry Wednesday, June 18, 2008 http://milosjanusoutlook.blogspot.com/

"Ye Zhiping knew about the shoddy construction of at least one of the Sangzao Middle School buildings because he had been a young teacher there when the building was constructed.
"Quality inspectors were supposed to be here to oversee construction of this building," he said. "When the foundation was laid, they should have been here. When the concrete was put into the pillars, they should have been here. But they weren't. In the end, no government official dared to come inspect this building because it was built without any standards…"
"I was among the first teachers who moved into this building, and I was pretty young," Ye said. "Our awareness of safety wasn't the same as now."
Ye’s attitude changed after he became principal twelve years ago.
If I knew there was a hidden danger, and I didn't do anything about it, then I would be the one responsible," he said.
From the day he became principal he didn’t waste time. He set about to get the funds for a complete overhaul of the buildings. One can only imagine the response of the “wise old greybeards” in the bureaucracy when he sought the money for the reconstruction. The county was poor and Sangzao was only a farming village. But Ye continued to pester the officials until he got 400,000 yuan (about $60,000). From 1996 to 1999 he personally oversaw a complete overhaul of the structure.
Most crucial were changes made to concrete pillars and floor panels. Each classroom had four rectangular pillars that were thickened so they jutted from the walls. Up and down the pillars, workers drilled holes and inserted iron reinforcing rods because the original ones were not enough, Ye said. The concrete slab floors were secured so they would be able to withstand intense shaking.
There were probably other greybeards in the school who thought that the principal had more important things to do than spend his time supervising the renovation.
Ye not only brought structural integrity to the buildings; he also had students and teachers prepare for a disaster. They rehearsed an emergency evacuation plan twice a year.
On May 12, Principal Ye was in a town fifty kilometers away when the earthquake came. As he worked his way back to his school he saw the rubble to which buildings had been reduced on the way. On the day that 10,000 students were crushed by collapsing school buildings, 1,000 of them in a school less than 20 miles away, the students at Sangzao Middle School managed to evacuate in less than two minutes.
The students lined up row by row on the outdoor basketball courts…. When the head count was complete, their fate was clear: All 2,323 were alive.
Students and parents credited “Angel Ye.”
“We’re very thankful,” Qiu Yanfang, 62, the grandmother of a student, said as she sat outside the school knitting a brown sweater. “The principal helped ease the nation’s loss, both the psychological loss and the physical loss.”
These days, students are seen darting in and out of the school to retrieve books, ducking under blue tape clearly marked danger. The building looks secure enough, but not to Principal Ye. He said it has to be torn down and a new one built, not simply to withstand an 8.0 that came this time, but to withstand an 11 or 12. And he expects to be there to see that it is built right."

People died doing exactly what they were told to do

In Australia's fire storms "People died doing exactly what they were told to do" February 11, 2009 according to Philip Chubb, associate professor of journalism at Monash University.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/opinion/people-died-doing-what-they-were-told/2009/02/11/1234028072848.html

Friends: 'same old same old' doesn't cut it. We have a lot of work to do to make sure that our safety advice is both evidence and experience-based.

The difference between first class and coach

Remember the Titanic...