Development Entrepreneurs

D evelopment workers inevitably have to shift either the focus of their work, their approach, or their level of activities.  This could be brought about by closure of projects, opening of new ones, changes in funding level, emerging circumstances, personal preferences or some other factor.  Whatever the reason, change comes. When this happens, it is important to shift "weight" from current work to new focus area in the same way that my Tai Chi idol moves from one position to another: slowly and firmly, decreasing weight from 70% to 30% on one foot while increasing weight on the other foot, all the time maintaining balance and poise. In practical terms, this includes: Keeping friends - just because we may no longer frequently with some partners does not mean we should lose touch with them. The world is round, and we'll probably work with them again in the future. Closure with honour - keep commitments made at the start of the engagement, acknowledge areas where...

I t's getting easier and cheaper to get high-quality, high-resolution orthophotos using drones. Relatively inexpensive quadcopter can be flown according to flight plans that provide the necessary overlap and side-lap. Drone processing software are available online, some for free. More people can definitely generate useful maps (not just pictures) using drones. Using those maps, however, still requires subject-specific competence - and competence in dealing with political/social/institutional matters.   The orthophoto above shows a local community in Cebu City that could benefit from public land titling, particularly the Residential Free Patent. This was taken with a DJI Phantom IV Pro that flew at 75 meters.  The image was processed using DroneDeploy. It took less than 24 hours to fly over the area and process the photos into one orthophoto. Public land titling experts who looked at records related to this site said that part of this area has already been surv...