Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

One of our fundraisers was digging through some old papers the other day, and came up with these remarkable artefacts from ActionAid's past. The 01 dialling code dates it  back to the 80s, but the fonts take us further than that. Any long-term supporters out there who can shed some light on when these posters were made?

(Click the images to download a full-size copy).

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

International Women's Day is a mixed blessing for an ActionAid web editor. On the one hand, since women's  rights are at the core of everything we do, it's a time when we gets lots of traffic to the site and appreciative comments.

The downside are the stories that come in from our teams in the developing world, which are often so distressing that I  struggle to read, let alone edit, them. The cruelty faced by women in war zones, and the grisly 'corrective' rape meted out to lesbian women in South Africa, actually make me feel physically sick, in a way that writing about post-earthquake Haiti or drought-stricken East Africa never have.

Why should this be? Perhaps it's the simple humanity of these events. These crimes feel personal in a way that the forces of economics or a natural disaster never can - and this is why we have our 6 Degrees Project, that brings out the personal connections between women all over the world.

It is also why we are confident that these are problems that can be fixed. The courage of the women who come forward to tell us their stories is the first step in the road to ending what remains the most widely accepted form of inequality in the world.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

A truly bizarre article in The Lancet - bizarre because it is usually a cautious, intelligent and even-handed publication - has accused aid agencies of 'jostling for position' and being 'Obsessed with raising money...' I don't really know where to start with this criticism (and I'm sure there will be a formal reply on Monday from ActionAid's top brass), but I'm sufficiently shocked to answer a few of their points right now.

Is THIS really the website of an organisation where "Marketing and branding have too high a profile"? It doesn't look like it to me. And would an organisation obsessed with branding really have chosen a meaningless acronym for its name?

If agencies are truly more concerned with"'jostling for position" rather than humanitarian aid, how did the DEC - a single organisation made up of 13 differenct aid agencies - end up raising money on a different order of magnitude to any of its constituent charities.

It is indeed "scandalous that it took a seismic shift in tectonic plates for Haiti to earn its place in the international spotlight", but that is categorically NOT the fault of aid agencies. ActionAid has been working in Haiti since 1996, we provided relief after hurricanes in 2008. In 2009-10 one of our priority projects (pictured below) is quality education for poor, rural children in Haiti.

It is absolutely vital that the press should examine aid agencies as rigorously as possible. We owe it to both our supporters and those we work with in poor countries to ensure that the way we spend our money is scutinized by outsiders.

But it's a shame to see a genuinely wonderful publication like the Lancet, and one that is usually so good about providing solid evidence to back up its claims, making these kind of broad criticisms that tar all charities with the same brush.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

2009 was a great year for protests. ActionAid made waves at Put People First, the Vedanta headquarters and, um, The Wave. President Lula donned HungerFREE boxing gloves to show his support for our Rome protest.

The Best Of The MegaMouth! from NonsenseLondon on Vimeo.

But I'm afraid that between right-wing rage at their new 'socialist' government and an ongoing debate over gay marriage, Americans have thoroughly eclipsed us for great ways to get their message across. Even the Megamouth and our attempt to do some mining under Vedanta's AGM can't compete with this fabulous gallery of the best protest signs of 2009. (Though I suspect number 4 might be from this side of the Atlantic. Careful now.)

If you think you can do any better, we need you to sign up for our campaign team. We've got some big plans for 2010 and we're going to need your help, on and offline, to come up with the brilliant slogans, tweets, banner, blog posts and more that make sure that politicians and big business listen to what we have to say.

www.twitter.com/buenosam

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

There's a lovely story today on the Aid Watch blog about a search for 10 big red balloons - the US Department of Defense placed them all over America, and offered $40,000 to the first team to locate them.

MIT found them all in under nine hours (that's 3.5 million square miles searched in a normal working day). They gave $2000 dollars to anyone who found a balloon, but they also gave $1000 to anyone who signed up a searcher who found a balloon, and $500 to the next person on the chain, and so on.

The US defense department immediately said this would be a great technique for stopping terrorist attacks ("Sign Up Your Friends to Spy on their Neighbours and You Could Win $40,000!!!"), but I prefer to think of it as a metaphor for giving money in a recession.

Sometimes, someone gives ActionAid £100,000. They see the work we're doing, and know that we'll spend it well. And we love that person. Everyone here would happily take them out, buy them a beer, tell them how fantastic they are. 

But every time someone does that, they've been told about ActionAid by a friend - and really, that friend is as responsible for the thousands of lives the money will change as the actual donor.

So if you're feeling as skint as me after Christmas, but still want to help end poverty. Why not forward our Uganda Schools Appeal to 10 of your friends (or put it on your Facebook or Twitter accounts). If a couple of them donate, or a couple of them forward it on to people who do, you'll have helped change the world, and it'll have only cost you a few clicks of your mouse.

Sam Bueno de Mesquita, ActionAid web editor

The best thing about working as an editor for ActionAid is that we aren't restricted by that boring marketing maxim "Keep it simple, stupid"

For example, have a look at this year's Christmas Appeal.

Traditional charities would base an East Africa drought appeal on starvation and misery. I'd be chasing after horror stories and photos that presented people in poor countries as dying beggars.

At ActionAid, we trust our supporters to think that little bit harder about things. That means that I get the chance to write about an issue that might not tug the pursestrings quite so hard, but is at the absolute centre of ending poverty.

In this case it's the story of children at three schools in Eastern Uganda, where hunger obliges them to spend their time fishing to keep their families alive, instead of studying at school and preparing themselves for the future. It's about bright, active people, making the best of a terrible situation, but suffering in the long term as a result. Most importantly, it's about using your donations to make sure that this kind of crisis never happens again, by providing the seeds, tools and skills that will enable the schools to produce the food these children need. 

I've got loads more material to add to these pages in the coming weeks, including more case studies, a full, detailed breakdown of how themoney will be spent, and a lovely email from the director of the program. Have a look at the Uganda Schools Feeding Appeal - and let me know what you think below.