Glenda Cooper
Glenda Cooper is a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford. She has just completed a Guardian research fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, researching how the media and aid agencies work together - or don't - during natural disasters. For the past 12 years, she has worked as a journalist around the world for a range of media including the BBC, Channel 4, the Daily Mail, the Independent and the Washington Post.
Aid groups in Sri Lanka tackle 'fat cat' image
There is a joke that goes round about aid agencies in Colombo. Try saying the acronym NGO in a Sri Lankan accent; it sounds very much like the word "enjoy" - and that, say many journalists, is the attitude aid workers have taken to their work in the country. Certainly that's how many Sri Lankan newspapers have portrayed NGOs: as fat cats enjoying their dollar salaries, riding round in big cars and staying in the best hotels. Of course this is not an unfamiliar criticism: It's one that agencies come across in many different countries. ...
Colombo's plans to resettle war-displaced spark concern
Everyone calls it the Cemetery, because that's what this field on Sinna Urein in Batticaloa was originally. When the dry earth gets very hot or is disturbed, skulls and bones make it to the surface. "NGOs usually bury people when they are dead," says Jathran, 32, one of the thousands who've fled an escalation of fighting in Sri Lanka's civil war. "The difference is this time, they've brought us here before we've started dying." ...
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