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Bloomsbury Humanitarian Debates - Challenges for NGOs

When:
Venue: Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street

No booking required

Bloomsbury Humanitarian Debates

Hosted by Birkbeck Politics, in collaboration with London School of Hygiene and SOAS.

Blocks in public responsiveness to humanitarian crises and development issues challenges for NGOs

Dr. Bruna Seu, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College and Glen Tarman, former International Advocacy Director at Action against Hunger, and chaired by Dr David Styan.

Despite the involvement of many millions of people in Britain, public support to causes that seek to alleviate pain and suffering overseas is not at the levels needed in a world of crises and major barriers to development and social justice. More than this, what the public seems to want and the practices of international NGOs, including when fundraising, appear too often to be lacking in compatibility. How can we best understand blocks to action that are happening given how NGOs presently approach public engagement in the UK? Ahead of the publication of a new book, Caring in Crisis? Humanitarianism, the Public, and NGOs, this event will explore this state of play, the efforts of NGOs to promote public engagement and how the main findings of the upcoming book might inform how NGOs can move from a transactional to a relational model of UK public participation in humanitarian crises and international development that is far more transformational.

This event will be interactive and relies on the active participation from the floor. Following the presentations, we will encourage members of the audience to brainstorm around the following question:

How can NGOs move from a transactional to a relational model of UK public participation in humanitarian crises and international development?