The purpose of this blogroll is to publicize the blogs of people working in international aid and development, whatever that means. The criteria for "aid worker" or "development worker" are fuzzy and it seems there's a lot of disagreement, but basically, we are looking for:

--> Individuals, not organizations, although very small organizations with a limited number of bloggers are also included here
--> People who are working in poor countries to improve the lives of the people living there in some way that will definitely help them on this earth (e.g. missionaries with proselytization as their main aim are not included, but seconded doctors would be), and who are non-political
--> People who are presently in the field, though if I could find a desk-officer, I might consider it
--> The worker might be from a rich or poor country himself- the blogroll is not limited to expatriates.

I am trying to remain somewhat anonymous so there is no e-mail here. Please post your blog, or the blog of someone you know, in the comments section. Don't worry if it doesn't show up right away. Comments with links are sometimes sent to the moderation queue. But I always get to them eventually.

Q & A

Q: Where did you find most of these blogs?
A: Painstaking searches after work via Google and Technorati, mostly. Some people wrote to me and I also follow the links of other people.

Q: I submitted a blog but you didn't add me. Why?
A: There are several possibilities. Are you the World Bank blog? The World Bank is not a person working in a poor country (because it is not a person) and thus was not accepted. Sorry. If you have a personal blog, please submit that. Are you someone living in a rich country, blogging about international aid and development? Sadly, I have to draw the line somewhere, and this blogroll is of field blogs. Finally, it is possible that you fit all of the criteria but for some reason, your comment got lost in one of the past discussions and buried by other new comments, so I didn't see it. Submit again- so sorry for the inconvenience.

Q: What about getting to be a blog that rocks the Casbah?
A: This is blogs that I really, really like, so much that I read them daily when I have access to the net. It consists of my personal friends and outstanding blogs. I keep it small because otherwise, who is going to bother looking at them? If your blog really rocks, comment and maybe we'll click on your name and go there and get addicted, then you can be in the list. Please do not submit blogs for the Casbah section, as I will delete such comments.

Q: What is a Casbah and how can I rock it?
A: Re: the Casbah, ask Vasco Pyjama, who recently asked herself that question. Re: rocking the Casbah, it does not involve bombing Iraq.

Q: One of your links is broken / one of the blogs has moved / my blog is moving / one of the blogs changed topics / etc. How can I comment on that?
A: In the comment section of the most recent post. The reason is that I don't have time to check all of the posts or pages here. What I mean is that I'm lazy and I don't feel like opening up a separate e-mail address. Thanks for understanding.

Q: Does it have to be in English?
A: No, but if it's not in French, Russian, Persian, or Spanish, I would really appreciate your affirming that it actually fits all of the criteria here, since I can't check that. Also please tell me what language the page is in in advance, so that in case I can't tell I know what to type into the translation machine. Cheers.

Q: I have a question. How can I ask it?
A: Ask it in the comments section for the most recent post. I'm not going to keep coming back here, is why. I'll answer it there and then maybe add it here.

Thanks ever so much to all the people who have contributed to my blogroll. Please keep them coming!