Pictures can say more than a thousand words and statistics is using this principle with all kinds of charts everyday.
Two particularly interesting visualisations for development numbers are the Worldmapper and the Gapminder.

Worldmapper offers a huge selection of maps which show geographic territories sized in accordance to the chosen indicator. An example is this map that shows infant mortality:

(Source: Worldmapper)

Gapminder’s approach is slightly different since Gapminders unique strength lies in the dynamics of the charts. Gapminder shows changes over time. To get a first impression of Gapminder’s statistics watch the exciting presentation of Hans Rosling here.

For your own, homebrew statistics use the Google Gapminder implementation: http://tools.google.com/gapminder

It is great fun to play with these tools and they also show that some of the myths in development work are not correct any longer.

I just went to the light procession for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo last weekend. It is good to see Norwegians celebrating the event and it is good to see the dignity and seriousness with which they pay tribute to the prize. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay for the whole event since I had to catch the plane back to Copenhagen. The ceremony itself can be watched here

At this day and with this prize we celebrate and cherish individuals who achieve outstanding results for peace in our world. But events like this are encouragement and call for action to all of us at the same time. What do we do in our daily lives to promote the well-being of our beings around us?
One other positive element of celebrations like these: General media coverage is normally driven to the worst of mankind’s actions, making us forget that every now and then good things actually do happen. Occasions like these remind us that some people try and succeed and thus give back hope.