This week we talk with Jennifer Lentfer, Director of Communications from Thousand Currents and the woman behind how-matters.org about her work and in particular the recent book she co-edited with Tanya Cothran, Smart Risks (and which can be found at www.smartrisks.org).  The book is about how small grants are helping to solve some of the world’s biggest problems and came out earlier this year. It features the growing community of grant makers that find and fund visionary grassroots leaders around the world. Talking about the book leads us into a fascinating conversation about how aid and development are viewed, why we should refocus our efforts on challenging power and inequality and how we can lead and facilitate in new ways to create the positive change which the world needs right now.

Jennifer describes herself as a farm girl turned international aid worker and was named as one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s “100 women to follow on Twitter” at @intldogooder. She is constantly looking for ways to portray the realities of people’s lives, their struggles, their strengths – as well as outsiders’ roles and mistakes – in an impatient, “silver bullet solutions” world. With her students at Georgetown University, she also published “The Development Element: Guidelines for the future of communicating about the end of global poverty” in 2014.

Connect with and find out more about Jennifer and her work:

Jennifer’s blog, How Matters: http://www.how-matters.org/
Thousand Currents Website: http://thousandcurrents.org/

Find the book at: https://www.smartrisks.org/
Twitter: @Tintldogooder