Becky Blab

Since last Monday, I’ve watched in horror and disbelief at Superstorm Sandy’s devastation. At first it was unclear just how widespread the wreckage was, but it has been slowly unraveling with each day.  I wanted to do something and tried to sign up to volunteer through the Red Cross, but there were several obstacles: they [...]

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Last week I attended a Technology Salon, organized by Linda Raftree (@meowtree) and hosted at the Rockefeller Foundation, on using ICTs for Monitoring & Evaluation. (Find her event re-cap of 11 points on strengthening local capacity to use new ICTs on her blog). Two main guests were Tom O’Connell, UNICEF Health Specialist, discussing capacity strengthening on local health [...]

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On Tuesday I attended an event hosted by UN-HABITAT called “Urban Futures: New Mindsets,” North Meets South.” It was a High-Level Working Session organized in part by Professor Dianne Davis of the International Council of Caring Communities. While the presentations spanned many different topics, including technology, ecology and health, the following is my recap from [...]

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On Saturday I watched the above National Geographic show on The Human Family Tree. I was pleasantly amused to see it was based in my diverse neighborhood of Queens: Astoria. If you ever need a reminder of how we are all one, you should definitely watch it! Seeing the progression of human migrations in the video, [...]

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Now that the Black Friday frenzy has worn off, I thought it worthwhile to reflect on my experience. Equal parts euphoric and traumatic, it was an initiation into a raging American consumerism that I thought I’d sworn off, and become immune to. Nonetheless, since it’s our first winter in the US and we either left [...]

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