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When West Side Story met International Development (in song)

Want to poke fun at international development and its idealist workers? Why not write a song that uses the melodies from Leonard Bernstein and a classic Disney love song.

Josh Cleveland of the University of Pennsylvania performs “Development Follies,” to the tune of some songs that you will probably recognize.

I wanna be in Africa so, so bad,
Bring them all the things they never had,
I wanna be on the cover of Time magazine,
Holding smiling children from Benin.

See the full lyrics here.

HT Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher

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About Author

Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy is a New Hampshire-based reporter for Humanosphere. Before joining Humanosphere, Tom founded and edited the aid blog A View From the Cave. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, GlobalPost and Christian Science Monitor. He tweets at @viewfromthecave. Contact him at tmurphy[at]humanosphere.org.