GfGD Blog Competition 2012

Tomorrow is our first birthday on the ‘Geology for Global Development’ blog – the forerunner to the GfGD organisation. Over the past 12 months we have published around 150 posts on topics ranging from water and sanitation, mining, geohazards and disaster risk reduction, the importance of soft skills and much more. We have had a range of guest blogs from students, academics and professionals, and recently have welcomed Dan Sharpe onto the writing team as a regular GfGD columnist. There have been a staggering 25,000+ pageviews over the past 12 months, from nations around the world – and we currently have over 4000 hits a month.

To celebrate one year of the GfGD blog, we’d like to invite you to join our ‘GfGD Blog Competition 2012’ with the chance to win a range of geological-themed prizes (to be announced soon). We are asking people to submit a blog post of no more than 600 words, and a maximum of 3 graphics, on one of the following broad topics:

(1) Success Stories – How has geoscience been used within development to bring about positive and sustainable change?

(2) Missing Skills – The importance of ‘soft-skills’ for geoscientists in the development sector.

(3) Communicating Geoscience – How can we improve the communication of geoscience to policymakers?

The article will require some research and background reading. It can be written in the style of your choice, be creative but make sure it is readable, accurate and informative. It can be entertaining or serious, challenging or provocative – the judges welcome a range of different writing styles. Applications should be sent by midday on 30th April 2012 to blog@gfgd.org, with the author’s name, e-mail address, contact number and university (or date of graduation).

After the submission deadline, a shortlist of the best articles will be compiled. All shortlisted articles will be published on our blog, and also in a special GfGD publication to be made available for download on our website. The overall winner and other special prize winners will be decided by our panel of guest judges, and winners will be contacted in June 2012.

Prizes, to be announced in the near future, will be awarded to the following categories:

(i) Overall Winner

(ii) Runners Up (x2)

(iii) Best original graphic (illustration, photo, other graphic).

You can read more, and download a PDF with the full details and rules from our website, and we strongly recommend all candidates do this. Please note this competition is open to current students or those who graduated not more than three years ago.

Basic Guide to Groundwater: Introduction

Over the past few months I have been writing a 'Basic Guide to Groundwater' for use by those working on water and sanitation projects overseas - who have not had much technical training or had any advanced study of science. The guide is also well-suited to those who speak English, but it is not their first language - using many simple and clear diagrams to communicate the key principles of geology and hydrogeology. 

The guide is less aimed at hydrogeologists, water technicians and water engineers (who are likely to have had some training) and more aimed at those managing, contracting and supervising water projects. It will give them a basic understanding of many important questions such as where is water stored underground, what are pumping tests, how does the water table change over time and what materials make good aquifers? It is hoped that the guide will improve the quality of decision making by such people, and from that improve the quality and sustainability of community water supplies. 

The publication is currently going through the review stage, with copies being distributed to some key individuals to seek their feedback and comments. Eventually it will be freely available as a PDF from the resources page of our main website. We are actively seeking sponsors for this publication, to fund future work and resources and help us disseminate this useful guide to as wide an audience as possible. If your organisation would be interested in profiling themselves within this guide, then please get in contact via our support page to discuss this possibility.

Over the coming weeks this blog will publish some of the text and diagrams from the guide to give you a taste of the sort of things it will cover.