AidSpeak: A Twitter Dictionary

This past weekend, Bill Easterly, author and former World Bank Economist, put out a challenge over his Twitter to create "witty decoding for development buzzwords" based on the 40 Publishing Buzzwords. That challenge rendered the AidSpeak Dictionary, a compilation of some of the words that Dr. Easterly picked out and put on his website. Some ...

This past weekend, Bill Easterly, author and former World Bank Economist, put out a challenge over his Twitter to create "witty decoding for development buzzwords" based on the 40 Publishing Buzzwords. That challenge rendered the AidSpeak Dictionary, a compilation of some of the words that Dr. Easterly picked out and put on his website. Some of the highlights include:

This past weekend, Bill Easterly, author and former World Bank Economist, put out a challenge over his Twitter to create "witty decoding for development buzzwords" based on the 40 Publishing Buzzwords. That challenge rendered the AidSpeak Dictionary, a compilation of some of the words that Dr. Easterly picked out and put on his website. Some of the highlights include:

"civil society involvement": consulting the middle class employee of aUS or European NGO –@dangay

 "field experience" : I can’t bear DC anymore –@MarianaSarastiM

"innovation" : we’re sexy, you want to be associated with us –@DarajaTz

"sustainable" : will last at least as long as the funding –@thejoeturner

"tackling root causes of poverty" : repackaging what we’ve already done in a slightly more sexy font –@thejoeturner

 

The dictionary comes in time for this weekend’s IMF and World Bank meetings. Look for more definitions from Walter Russell Mead‘s blog or from Dr. Easterly’s Twitter.

Kedar Pavgi is an editorial researcher at Foreign Policy.

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