#appointment in ghana

[jt1674]

[abroaddream]

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[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #19

May 17-24 2024

President Biden wiped out the student loan debt of 160,000 more Americans. This debt cancellation of 7.7 billion dollars brings the total student loan debt relieved by the Biden Administration to $167 billion. The Administration has canceled student loan debt for 4.75 million Americans so far. The 160,000 borrowers forgiven this week owned an average of $35,000 each and are now debt free. The Administration announced plans last month to bring debt forgiveness to 30 million Americans with student loans coming this fall.

The Department of Justice announced it is suing Ticketmaster for being a monopoly. DoJ is suing Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation for monopolistic practices. Ticketmaster controls 70% of the live show ticket market leading to skyrocketing prices, hidden fees and last minute cancellation. The Justice Department is seeking to break up Live Nation and help bring competition back into the market. This is one of a number of monopoly law suits brought by the Biden administration against Apple in March and Amazon in September 2023.

The EPA announced $225 million in new funding to improve drinking and wastewater for tribal communities. The money will go to tribes in the mainland US as well as Alaska Native Villages. It'll help with testing for forever chemicals, and replacing of lead pipes as well as sustainability projects.

The EPA announced $300 million in grants to clean up former industrial sites. Known as "Brownfield" sites these former industrial sites are to be cleaned and redeveloped into community assets. The money will fund 200 projects across 178 communities. One such project will transform a former oil station in Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood, currently polluted with lead and other toxins into a waterfront bike trail.

The Department of Agriculture announced a historic expansion of its program to feed low income kids over the summer holidays. Since the 1960s the SUN Meals have served in person meals at schools and community centers during the summer holidays to low income children. This Year the Biden administration is rolling out SUN Bucks, a $120 per child grocery benefit. This benefit has been rejected by many Republican governors but in the states that will take part 21 million kids will benefit. Last year the Biden administration introduced SUN Meals To-Go, offering pick-up and delivery options expanding SUN's reach into rural communities. These expansions are part of the Biden administration's plan to end hunger and reduce diet-related disease by 2030.

Vice-President Harris builds on her work in Africa to announce a plan to give 80% of Africa internet access by 2030, up from just 40% today. This push builds off efforts Harris has spearheaded since her trip to Africa in 2023, including $7 billion in climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation, and $1 billion to empower women. The public-private partnership between the African Development Bank Group and Mastercard plans to bring internet access to 3 million farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria, before expanding to Uganda, Ethiopia, and Ghana, and then the rest of the continent, bring internet to 100 million people and businesses over the next 10 years. This is together with the work of Partnership for Digital Access in Africa which is hoping to bring internet access to 80% of Africans by 2030, up from 40% now, and just 30% of women on the continent. The Vice-President also announced $1 billion for the Women in the Digital Economy Fund to assure women in Africa have meaningful access to the internet and its economic opportunities.

The Senate approved Seth Aframe to be a Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, it also approved Krissa Lanham, and Angela Martinez to district Judgeships in Arizona, as well as Dena Coggins to a district court seat in California. Bring the total number of judges appointed by President Biden to 201. Biden's Judges have been historically diverse. 64% of them are women and 62% of them are people of color. President Biden has appointed more black women to federal judgeships, more Hispanic judges and more Asian American judges and more LGBT judges than any other President, including Obama's full 8 years in office. President Biden has also focused on backgrounds appointing a record breaking number of former public defenders to judgeships, as well as labor and civil rights lawyers.

[rlyehtaxidermist]

what drives me the craziest about the US-Israel relationship is how completely unconditional it is. from the United States of all countries. the pillar of needlessly conditional foreign aid.

the World Bank - a nominally international organisation, but headquartered in Washington DC and with its leadership appointed by the United States government - demanded that postwar France oust a third of its government in order to receive the Bank's first loan; cancelled $100 million dollars in aid to Ecuador because the government invested a portion of its oil revenue in education rather than repaying American bankers; demanded "the elimination of all food subsidies in both secondary and tertiary education" in Ghana in the name of "cost recovery"; the list goes on.

And that's not even the official USAID policies, which are even more mercurial;

but apparently we need to send them billions of dollars in bullets every year, without asking any questions about it. because they need it. for stuff we can't ask about. but god help us if those Ghanaian middle schoolers don't pay for their crumbs, right?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: Identity Crisis | Real Time with Bill Maher

And finally, New Rule: now that we're all recovered from St Patrick's Day, let's make it the last one. You know, I never understood Irish Pride or any pride in anything other than what you've actually accomplished. And as holidays go, St Pattie's is kind of malarkey. You don't get presents like Christmas or candy like Easter or joyless appointment sex like Valentine's Day. You don't even get a Peanuts special.

There's just a parade. And what rights are we marching for? The right to drink in the day? Do we still need to take to the streets in a public expression of support for Irish migrants?

I think now more than ever we need to stop talking about the things that make Americans different from each other and start honoring the things that make us the same. So let my people, the Irish, lead the way because again, the Irish think I don't give a shit.

But, I do give a shit who wins the next election. And outdated racial pandering is one reason Democrats lose elections. When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi put on Kente cloth, I don't think it earned them one vote for their powerful emotional ties to Ghana.

Here in California, we're now segregating kidnapping. Really. California doesn't just have amber alerts for missing children, we have ebony alerts for black children and feather alerts for Native American Kids. What is that we look for them by listening on the ground?

Look, even if you like identity politics, this kind of thing is antiquated. From 2010 to 2020, the number of people identifying as multi-racial in America went up 276 percent. One in five newlyweds now are in an interracial marriage. And that number goes up to 100% in ads for Subaru.

You couldn't do a remake of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" today because almost 100% of Americans approve of interracial marriage. Especially with rich in-laws. And 95% of white women would leave their husband to marry Idris Elba. Idris Elba who says, "As humans we are obsessed with race and that obsession can really hinder people's aspirations." Actress Raven-Symone agrees. She told Oprah, "I'm tired of being labeled. I'm not an African-American. I'm an American." She says, "I don't know what country in Africa I'm from. My roots are in Louisiana."

And you don't have to agree with that, but it's a point of view a lot of people have. It should be respected. Morgan Freeman says the way to finish off racism is, "stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man."

There's even a movement now to ban racial questions on the census, and many of its leaders are people of color like Professor Sheena Mason who says, "to undo racism we have to undo our belief in race."

The liberal group moveon.org formed in 1998 to urge Republicans to move on from the Clinton impeachment. Today's Democrats should move on from identity politics. It's not working. It's not working for them or for us. Democrats are hemorrhaging the very voters they think they're pandering to.

The Financial Times writes, "Democrats are going backwards faster with voters of color than any other demographic," and suggests the reason is that, "A less racially divided America is an America where people vote more based on their beliefs than their identity." Exactly. Far-left liberals are living in an old paradigm. Americans don't fit into into neat little boxes anymore.

Who has the number one country song right now? Beyonce. Lil Naz X won a country music award, and he's black and gay. And a brand ambassador for the waspiest purse in America, Coach. The biggest new star in country is Jelly Roll who was a drug dealer, then a prisoner, then a rapper and then a face tatted country music star. Not to mention a giant middle finger to the idea of staying in your own lane.

No, in America now, you're allowed to be many things all at once and that's a good thing even when it's really stupid.

Look, we're all Jelly Roll now. We're sloppy, complicated and contradictory. Two-thirds of Republican voters support weed legalization. And 41% of Democrats own or live with someone who owns a gun. Ms Marvel is Pakistani. And the winner of the last two NBA dunk contests is white. The new Captain America is black. And Spider-Man is black and Puerto Rican, just like AI George Washington.

Latinos make up half of the Border Patrol. And the name of the coolest black dude on the planet is Lenny Kravitz. Ru Paul has a ranch in Wyoming that does fracking. Really. And has a fortified compound with a bunker to die for. And somehow the leader of the Village People was straight. Really. Je just went to the YMCA to work out. And the leader of the Proud Boys isn't an old white guy he's Enrique Toreo, an Afro-Cuban. He burns crosses on his own lawn.

Caitlyn Jenner is a pro-Trump transwoman who supports a ban on trans athletes competing in women's sports. And there's even an LGBTQ organization called "Gays for Trump." And why wouldn't there be? Gays love drag queens.

Our black president was half white. And our black vice president is half Asian. And Tiger Woods is, oh we don't even have the time.

My point is, look, you're still building your politics around slicing and dicing people into these fixed categories. Democrats need to get the memo that you can't win elections anymore by automatically assuming you're going to get every voter who's not these guys.

The more you obsess over identity, the more you ignore the bread and butter issues that win and lose elections. The real issue is class, not race, and the real gap is the diploma divide. And the real future of the party and maybe democracy depends on Democrats figuring that out.

==

Prediction: Trump will win, because even if the Dems wanted to change course on this identity politics bullshit, there are far too many identarians who have been elected into it on that exact basis. Look at The Squad, where every single one of them is a pathological liar who plays only by identity cards.

They can't undo a decade of abandoning their core constituency, the working class, in favor of privileged woke academic elites in the span of only six months. Even if they wanted to. Not with the wingnuts still around, doing what they've been doing for years: sucking up all the oxygen and screaming about their imaginary oppression. And there's no sign they do.

[lyledebeast]

Fathers, Sons, and Imperialism in Turn and The Patriot

It’s interesting that between these two narratives about the American Revolution there are three British characters from three different social classes, with three different problems that all, somehow, have the same solution: military service. And in each case, the British Army provides for the character in a way his father could or would not. William Tavington joined the army because his father “squandered” the wealth he was meant to inherit.  Edmund Hewlett joined because the trade embargo the Continental Congress enacted in 1775 nearly bankrupted his father.  Ensign Baker never knew his sailor father, grew up in an orphanage, and joined up because the Army needed healthy young men even if no one else wanted them. That military service is treated as a catch-all solution goes to show how imbued with imperialism 18th C society was at every level.

Of course, it turns out to be a very poor solution for all three characters. Tavington and Baker are both dead by the ends of their stories, and Hewlett comes near death many times, often at British hands, and is forced into one morally untenable situation after another, which nearly breaks him.  Their similarities end here, though, because while Baker and Hewlett are presented as sympathetic men who are doing their best to do what they see as right, Tavington is presented as the ultimate evil.  For a movie that is just under three hours, it has an extremely brief resolution.  Benjamin Martin stabs Tavington to death, delivers a voice-over monologue that fast forwards to the end of the war when he and his new bride/old sister in law find the house Tavington burned being rebuilt.  Martin’s job is much easier than Turn protagonist Abe Woodhull’s.  While Martin only has to kill one man and fix what can be fixed of the problems he caused, Woodhull has to uproot the effects of imperialism, including in his own father’s beliefs and values.

Of course, Turn has more room for nuance in four seasons than The Patriot has in three hours, but there is a deeper difference at work here.  The reason Turn can afford sympathetic British characters is that it presents imperialism itself as the ultimate evil.  Part of the reason Richard Woodhull clings so stubbornly to the British empire is that he recalls a time when it did defend his community from the Dutch and the Iroquois.  Abraham has no success in convincing his father until the community, and Abraham himself specifically, come under British attack in the form of Captain Simcoe.  

The major antagonist of the series, Simcoe is also the character who most effectively represents the evils of imperialism: While Tavington and (presumably) Baker are from England and Hewlett is from Scotland, Simcoe has never been to Great Britain. He is the son of a British surgeon who suffocated in the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. By far the most enthusiastic soldier in the series, he sees it as his personal mission to “remind” colonials throughout the empire that their homes “belong to our king,” in Ghana and the Caribbean before he was stationed in Long Island.  As much as he is an advocate of imperialism, though, Simcoe is its victim as much as Hewlett and Baker.  In Simcoe’s final scene in the series, General Clinton offers him an appointment in upper Canada, citing the effects of the wound Simcoe received in his last encounter with Woodhull as preventing the wartime appointment he wants. Violence has been such a staple of his life that he is deeply bewildered by the thought of operating in a British colony where the only enemy to be subdued is the weather.

Regardless of narrative length, presenting Simcoe as an agent of imperialism, the true evil, makes more sense than presenting Tavington as the main enemy to be defeated, not least because no one man could possibly have all the power The Patriot attributes to him. The movie’s original tagline invites the audience to see Martin as having no choice but to take up arms against the British in response to Tavington’s actions, and the movie’s producer describes General Cornwallis as “a victim” of Tavington’s seduction.  The idea that only Tavington has any volition in this story is ridiculous.  Cornwallis has the ability to restrain him and does retrain him for the entire middle of the movie.  Martin has the ability to take his grievances against Tavington to Cornwallis before he massacres the British soldiers in the woods, and even after that he has a militia full of trackers and “excellent marksmen” who could eliminate Tavington.  They choose to not do these things. There are numerous Watsonian and Doylist explanation for this, but the one I’m most interested in here is that the story needs a villain, and that villain cannot be imperialism because the movie’s protagonists have spent too much time enforcing and benefitting from it themselves.

While Turn is a story about children pushing back against the patriarchy of imperialism--both figurative and, in Abe’s case, literal--The Patriot is a story about fathers.  A number of the fathers in The Patriot are also veterans of the French and Indian War, known as the Seven Years War in Europe, a global conflict between the British and French Empires.  While Abe’s freedoms are palpably restricted--he can’t even have an extramarital affair in his own home without the British walking in!--The Patriot’s fathers chafe against what they see as ingratitude for their service in preserving Britain’s empire.  “I lost a leg fighting for King George, and now he cuts off my other leg with his taxes!” Mr. Howard complains near the start of the movie.  Of course, he has more to complain about when Tavington arrives and visits the same brutal treatment on him and his family that colonial forces under Benjamin Martin had visited on the Cherokees during the last war.  Well, not quite the same.  Tavington does not use pieces of his victims as bargaining chips or incentivize murder with a scalp bounty. 

The narrative seeks to balance Martin’s past actions with his current feelings about what he has done, but those feelings do not diminish the concrete rewards he continues to enjoy owing to the exact same set of actions. Gabriel Martin tells us that all his life, men have bought his father drinks because of Fort Wilderness; he does not mention his father refusing to drink them. Men choose to fight for Benjamin Martin because of Fort Wilderness. His house is being rebuilt for him on land he took from the Cherokees by committing atrocities at Fort Wilderness.  The wages of imperialist violence have served him well.

It seems worth noting that while Martin’s arc ends with him killing a British soldier, in some respects, Abe Woodhull’s begins in the same way.  He makes several attempts to resist or give up spying in season one, but Baker’s death is the action from which there is no going back.  When his wife Mary asks him if Baker’s death meant nothing, he replies, “It meant everything!” He ends his explanation to her by declaring “I will not stop until every king’s man goes back to England.” His choice of words is interesting here.  He took no pleasure in killing Baker and he does not want to kill British soldiers in the future; he just wants them out of his home.  Obviously, his views evolve a great deal over the next three seasons, but ultimately he does not lose sight of what the real enemy is.  Whether it is Baker’s untimely sense of honor or the best chance he ever gets to kill Simcoe, Abe is not going to let one British soldier stop him from doing what he believes is right.

There is a degree of understanding for British soldiers as people in the young patriots of Turn that is completely foreign to the fathers of The Patriot.  One pervasive example is that the preferred moniker for such soldiers in Turn is “bloodyback.” Having lived in British-occupied Long Island, the young patriots are all too aware of how that term originated, and as the audience we see several floggings of British soldiers administered by British officers.  Imperialism harms its enforcers, not just those whom it subjugates.  Meanwhile, the moniker used in The Patriot is “redcoat:” ironic given how many characters have donned “red coats” themselves in the not so distant past.  

The fathers in both stories are afflicted not so much by poor memories as by short-sightedness.  Like Benjamin Martin, Richard Woodhull is a supporter of imperialism until it threatens the life of his son, but he catches a lot more criticism for his choices throughout the series than Martin ever does.  “You’re a businessman, and you think the British are a safe bet,” Mary chides him before encouraging him to prioritize his family over his politics, as she has done.  He only takes her advice when Abe has a rope around his neck, having clung so tightly to the benefits of imperialism that he very nearly loses his only son.  In this story, it is the children of independence who guide their imperialist fathers, showing them that change is possible.  Meanwhile, the valorization of Martin’s gains through imperialist violence in The Patriot assures the audience that no change was necessary to win the fight for independence.  Small wonder that movie came to enjoy such popularity during the second Bush administration.

[valkyries-things]

YAA ASANTEWAA // QUEEN MOTHER OF EJISU

“She was the Queen Mother of Ejisu in the Ashanti Empire, now part of modern-day Ghana. She was appointed by her brother Nana Akwasi Afrane Okese, the Edwesuhene, or ruler, of Edwesu. In 1900, she led the Ashanti war also known as the War of the Golden Stool, or the Yaa Asantewaa War of Independence, against the British Empire.”

[richardnixonlibrary]

#Nixon50 #OTD 2/28/1974 President Nixon met with Shirley Temple Black, United States Delegate to the United Nations, and staff assistant Maj. Gen. Brent Scowcroft. In September 1974, President Ford appointed Black the new United States Ambassador to Ghana. Ambassador Black went on to serve as Chief of Protocol for the White House (1976-1977) and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1989-1992). (Image: WHPO-E2311-01A)

[ghanashowbizonline]

Sports Today - Aboubakar Ouattara is a brilliant coach - Hearts of Oak MD Dr Delali Anku-Adiamah

Ghana News Online; bringing you all trending news as it happens. Get daily comprehensive summary of the recent news in entertainment, sports, politics, business + more that have rocked the online scene. Check out the news below. Aboubakar Ouattara The Managing Director of Hearts of Oak, Dr Delali Anku-Adiamah has eulogized the recently appointed head coach, Aboubakar Ouattara for his impact. The…

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Pamela E. Bridgewater

Pamela E. Bridgewater was born in 1947 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Bridgewater joined the US Foreign Service in 1980. She was appointed to serve as a political officer in South Africa in 1990, and became the longest-serving US diplomat in that country. Bridgewater was appointed US Ambassador to Benin by Bill Clinton, US Ambassador to Ghana by George W. Bush, and US Ambassador to Jamaica by Barack Obama. She has received the Presidential Meritorious Service Award in recognition of her work.

Image source: US Department of State

[abroaddream]

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[calciopics]

Referee Stéphanie Frappart Will Lead First All-Woman Team at World Cup

Some 92 years after the first World Cup game was held in Uruguay, Stéphanie Frappart is set to become the first woman to be the lead referee during a men’s match at the tournament. Frappart, a French referee, has been appointed to a refereeing crew of all women during a decisive group stage game between Costa Rica and Germany on Thursday.

Frappart, 38, will lead alongside Neuza Back of Brazil and Mexico’s Karen Diaz Medina. It is a barrier-breaking moment which both coaches welcomed and suggested was overdue.

“I trust her 100 percent,” Germany’s manager, Hansi Flick, said of Frappart’s appointment. “I think she deserves to be here due to her performance and achievements.” Costa Rica’s manager, Luis Fernando Suárez, said the same during his prematch news conference.

“I am a great admirer of everything women have conquered,” he said. “And I like that they want to keep conquering things. And this is another step forward, especially in this sport, which is a very macho.”

Frappart told French reporters she considered her selection as lead referee “a surprise.” Still, she has had a stellar career for nearly two decades. A native of Le Plessis-Bouchard, a remote town in the far north of the Paris region, she officiated her first game in 2003 at age 19 — a women’s match between the Henin-Beaumont F.C. and La Roche-sur-Yon. Within two decades, she was overseeing a Women’s World Cup final.

Since then, she climbed the ladder like no woman before her, racking up accolades. In 2014, she became the first woman to be lead referee during a men’s Ligue 2 game, in France’s second division. She then refereed games in men’s Ligue 1, during international friendlies and in the Champions League.

On Aug. 14, 2019, Frappart also became the first woman to referee the UEFA Super Cup between Chelsea and Liverpool. After the game, Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool coach, praised her performance.

“If we would have played like they whistled, then we would have won, 6-0,” he said.

Frappart’s also refereed the Women’s World Cup final in 2019, when the United States beat the Netherlands to cap a tournament that was a major public forum for the U.S. team’s fight for equal pay and treatment from its national federation.

Pierluigi Collina, the chairman of the FIFA referee committee who is known for being tough on colleagues, has high praise for Frappart. “I hope that there will be more Frapparts in the future and that this will no longer constitute an oddity or news story,” Collina told the Italian press in 2021. At the Globe Soccer Awards in 2019, Frappart won an award as best referee and Collina handed her the trophy.

Frappart told French reporters that she was “aware” that her presence in the tournament is “going to inspire.” But she would prefer to let her whistle do the talking.

“I don’t want to be judged differently because of my gender but because of my refereeing skills,” she said.

In Qatar, Stephanie Frappart has already officiated as fourth referee for two matches during the group phase, when Mexico faced Poland and Portugal played Ghana.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil’s female diplomats in new equality push after dark days of Bolsonaro

Movement to tackle lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office coincides with Lula’s return to power

More than a century after Maria José de Castro Rebello Mendes became, in 1918, the first woman to enter Brazil’s diplomatic service, the country’s female diplomats have launched a new push for equal rights and opportunity. Women make up less than 25% of Brazil’s diplomatic corps and just 12% of ambassadors.

“We are blossoming at this moment of democratic government,” said Irene Vida Gala, a senior diplomat who served as ambassador to Ghana and is now the president of the newly created Association of Female Brazilian Diplomats.

This institutional push to address the lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office, known as Itamaraty, after the 19th-century Rio palace where it was once housed, coincides with the return to power of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after the four-year term of his openly misogynistic far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Lula, who has appointed Brazil’s most diverse cabinet ever, promised a fresh start after the trail of devastation left by Bolsonaro.

In the case of Itamaraty, this means “total reconstruction, because what we have today is scorched earth,” said Marília Closs of Plataforma Cipó, a thinktank focused on governance, peace, and climate. “Bolsonaro’s foreign policy wasn’t used as a tool to guarantee Brazil’s national interest, but instead as a tool for bolsonarismo.”

Continue reading.

[gravalicious]

Born in Barbados, he had won the island's scholarship in Natural Science soon after the outbreak of the First World War, and, accepting the hazards of Atlantic travel, in due course he arrived at St Catharine's, there to be greeted by the legendary Spratt with a quelling: ' Sir, how dare you come in here with your cap on? ' His astonishment was therefore profound when he heard Spratt greet the young man who followed him with: ' Sir, how dare you come in here with your cap off?' Nor, when visiting Fulbourn Mental Hospital as part of his medical course—and these stories he delighted in telling had he expected an inmate to tap him on the shoulder and say: '1 know who you are. You're from Uncle Tom's cabin!' He took his degree in 1917, and but for the interruption of the Second World War, his advancement in the medical world would undoubtedly have been more rapid than it was. Soon, however, in 1949, recognition came with his appointment as Medical Referee in the Welfare Department of the Colonial Office, and three years later he was not only elected to the Council of the British Medical Association as representative for the West Indies, but also made a Governor of the new West Indian Students Centre at Earls Court in London. Then, in 1958, so widely was he now recognised, he was appointed Medical Adviser to the Ghana Government with the further official title of Senior Medical Officer. During the previous ten years he had represented the Caribbean area on the Colonial Advisory Medical Committee under the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and for the last five had also represented that area on the Council of the British Medical Association. To that extent were his outstanding talents recognized in the field of Medicine.

Obituaries

CECIL BELFIELD CLARKE: Died—28th November 1970 [St. Catharine’s Magazine, Sept 1971]

[scotianostra]

On 20th April 1918, Mora Dickson, Scottish author, painter and campaigner, was born in Mofat.

Mora went on to be one of the founders of the Voluntary Service Overseas, or VSO, scheme.

Mora was born in Glasgow, an accountant's only daughter and the second of four children. She spent her early years in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, largely to avoid the polluted air of the city. Her father drove around the United Kingdom in search of the "right" school, and she was eventually educated at St Felix's, Lowestoft - where she became head girl - and Edinburgh School of Art, although her studies were cut short by the outbreak of the second world war.

Dickson met her future husband in London where had she moved to pursue a career as an artist.

Initially, she took an instant dislike to the impeccably dressed, arrogant man, who, in turn, thought she was an upstart.

However, despite the bad start, they fell in love and in 1951 - two years after they first met - they were married.

Then a journalist with a passion for do-gooding in the former colonies, Alec was later appointed an ambassador for the United Nations and Mora accompanied her husband on all of his official trips.

Their vision for VSO grew out of a disastrous trip to Iraq when Alec was the head of a UN delegation to Baghdad. He realised that what was needed was not bureaucrats touring the capital but volunteers able to speak the language and work at grassroots level.

In 1957, Alec resigned from the UN and VSO was born.

The couple drove through thick jungle, hiked over thickly-misted foothills and slept under mosquito nets as they toured different projects.

VSO differed from its predecessors by shrugging off colonial do-gooding for hard graft and youthful energy from volunteers who wanted to help without being patronising.

The first dozen 18-year-olds who were sent to Ghana, Nigeria and Sarawak became an army of volunteers reaching across the developing world and VSO went on to become one of Britain’s greatest exports.

John F Kennedy was so impressed he summoned the Dicksons to Washington in 1961 to advise on the establishment of the Peace Corps.

But despite the achievements, just four years later they were ousted.

The coup was a devastating blow for her husband, who did not leave his room in the couple’s London home for a week. Having recovered, the Dicksons went on to found Community Service Volunteers (CSV) in 1961, a home-based version of the charity.

Both from wealthy families, the couple invested their money in the stock market and property. But although they quietly amassed a small fortune they lived frugally, recalled Robertson.

"They never spent anything," he said. "Mora would buy her clothes from a catalogue; she hated shopping. But if you ever needed money there would be a cheque in the post before you knew it. Her generosity, with both her time and money, was quite extraordinary."

After the death of her husband in 1994 at the age of 80, Dickson returned to her roots in Scotland, moving to Edinburgh where she continued to paint and write.

She was made honorary vice-president of VSO 12 years before her death, in a belated move by the trustees to heal the rift.

Dickson, who has 43 grandnieces and nephews and an extended family across the world, never had children of her own.

A prolific author, she had 21 books published during her lifetime.

She also wrote of her travels and illustrated the stories with black and white scraper-board drawings which brought the couple’s adventures into relief.

When Dickson died, her niece Sue Robertson, was flooded with letters of condolence from all over the world.

She said: "The esteem and regard in which she was held all over the world was really quite overwhelming."