Focus Podcast

Todays guests are Lorna King, Conor McCabe and Sean McCabe. What are the kinds of things we need to think about and act on to realise a New Green Deal and Just Transition in the time of COVID19. Economies across the world deliberately put into deep freeze as part of halting the spread of the virus. Stay at home measures, massive unemployment and unprecedented state intervention contrary to accepted norms of neoliberal democracies have trailed the spread of the virus as it continues to move across the planet. Shibboleths of economic logic have been shaken, and in many countries the impact of years of cuts to funding to public in health, education and care work have had impacts still yet to be fully understood. And yet the crisis of climate justice only a few months ago, loomed large in the mind of much of the worlds population. We were living at a time of great dissonance between science and evidence of the social and ecological costs of climate change, yet also at a time of resistance to deep political thinking and actions around what is needed to face those challenges Focus is an audio project from Comhlámh, the association of returned development workers and volunteers. Produced and hosted by Mark Malone, Focus is a mix of documentaries and and interviews. Over time it takes a varied look at issues and themes around global inequality and talks to people involved in different ways in challenging inequality and injustices wherever they are. The post Focus: Green New Deal, Just Transition and Covid 19 first appeared on Nearcast.

Three Comhlámh staff members, Sive Bresnihan, Caoimhe Butterly and Mark Malone asked if it were possible to have radical hope and show solidarity with social justice issues during a global pandemic, when people are experiencing such challenging feelings. Mark Malone, who is Comhlámh’s communications officer, started the discussion by noting the number of deaths from Covid-19 and he reminded the listener that these were real people who were mourned by families and friends around the world. He then asked his colleagues to begin to think about how it was possible to still show solidarity with social justice issues when everyone is living in a time of such grief, fear and anxiety. Caoimhe Butterly was the first to try and answer this. Caoimhe is working on a European funded project for Comhlámh called Working for a Better World which aims to provide psycho-social supports to people working directly with people applying for international protection, in several European countries. Caoimhe is also a trainee psychotherapist, so it came as no surprise that her first concern was the general mental health of people. She noted that people were struggling to manage feelings of grief, loss, anxiety, fear and uncertainty and that many people were experiencing trauma. However, she was encouraged to see that people were being open about their worries and their vulnerabilities and were, perhaps, more willing to discuss these issues than normal. She was also positive that as we are all going through this crisis together, (albeit subjectively and with unique pressures and challenges) we will all have an opportunity to go through a healing process together too. Caoimhe was hopeful that the experiences people are having now, might make it easier in the future, to show a greater empathy with those who are seeking refuge or applying for asylum. People are now experiencing how it feels to have life decisions taken out of their hands and to have even daily routines restricted and controlled, and she very much hoped that we would be able to use these feelings in a positive way, in the future. Sive Bresnihan is Comhlámh’s education and training officer and she develops and delivers training courses on global citizenship. She wondered if this pause on busyness and activity could be an opportunity for people to reflect on the structural inequalities in society and their place within it. She asked us to think about the benefits we enjoy in this society, and our embeddedness and complicity in it. She warned that these questions and answers might not be easy to work with, but hoped that the compulsory silence might be a time to do it. Further reading: Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development Discourse (2007). Andrea Cornwall: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25548244?seq=1 Gesturing towards decolonial futures: (a number of contributors, including Vanessa Andriotti): https://decolonialfutures.net/house-of-modernity/ Focus is an audio project from Comhlámh, the association of returned development workers and volunteers. Produced and hosted by Mark Malone, Focus is a mix of documentaries and and interviews. Over time it takes a varied look at issues and themes around global inequality and talks to people involved in different ways in challenging inequality and injustices wherever they are. The post Focus: Social Justice and Radical Hope in a Global Pandemic first appeared on Nearcast.

We headed to Achill island for the the second International Health and Development Training for Healthcare Workers. Organised for people interested in volunteering or working in healthcare in less developed countries, this two day residential workshop of the west coast of Ireland looks at the nature of global health care in resource poor settings. Focus spoke to organisers about why the weekend was put together and about the big picture politics around global inequality and health. Focus is an audio project from Comhlámh, the association of returned development workers and volunteers. Produced and hosted by Mark Malone, Focus is a mix of documentaries and and interviews. Over time it takes a varied look at issues and themes around global inequality and talks to people involved in different ways in challenging inequality and injustices wherever they are. The post Focus: Visiting Achill Island, global health and growing inequality first appeared on Nearcast.

Focus dropped into Donabate-Portrane Educate Together National School (DPETNS) and PEPY Empowering Youth during an exchange visit to speak about the work of the Cambodia Ireland Changemaker Network. The network has developed from 2013, when four young Irish teachers from Dublin travelled to Cambodia seeking to establish an educational partnership that would benefit both Irish and Cambodian students. A partnership was established between DPETNS and PEPY Empowering Youth, based on strong principles of development. Focus is an audio project from Comhlámh, the association of returned development workers and volunteers. Produced and hosted by Mark Malone, Focus is a mix of documentaries and and interviews. Over time it takes a varied look at issues and themes around global inequality and talks to people involved in different ways in challenging inequality and injustices wherever they are. The post Focus: The Cambodia-Ireland Changemaker Network first appeared on Nearcast.

Focus has a chat with Dr Eilish Dillon, exploring some of the ideas, assumptions and practices underpinning much of the work of the international development sector in Ireland and elsewhere. We explore the problematic and artificial divide between community and international development that has evolved over times. Eilish shines a light on the way that the language of international development and ‘social justice’ can disguise power imbalances and lead to choices of actions around change, that are much less effective that they might seem. Focus is an audio project from Comhlámh, the association of returned development workers and volunteers. Produced and hosted by Mark Malone, Focus is a mix of documentaries and and interviews. Over time it takes a varied look at issues and themes around global inequality and talks to people involved in different ways in challenging inequality and injustices wherever they are. The post Focus: Eilish Dillon on rethinking the divide between community and international development first appeared on Nearcast.