Are we overlooking the capacity of local NGOs? My guest post on The Broker Online argues that rather than being the lowest common denominator of international assistance, local indigenous organizations should be regarded as the fundamental unit of effective development aid.[...]
Posts Tagged ‘alternatives’
October 5th, 2011 - 7:34 am § in Reflection & Rumination
What’s missing from the aid effectiveness debate? Overlooking the capacity of local organizations
Tags: accountability, Accra Agenda for Action, alternatives, Arab Spring, Busan, Center for Global Development, Chet Tchozewski, climate change, community participation, community-based organizations, complexity, conflict, food crisis, foreign aid, foreign assistance, funding mechanisms, GlobalGreengrants, grassroots organizations, HIV/AIDS, international aid, international development, NGOs, Oxfam, Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, poverty, power dynamics, Rajiv Shah, Robert Zoellick, social change, social movements, Somalia, South Africa, Todd Moss, USAID, WiserEarth, women’s groups, World Bank 3 Comments
September 11th, 2011 - 10:00 am § in Good Practice
A Second Dip into the Reading Pile
Sharing excerpts of twelve papers on international development and aid effectiveness from my reading pile. [...]
Tags: aid workers, alternatives, Andrea Cornwall, Antal Miklós, Barbara Klugman, BOND, capacity building, Center for Evaluation Innovation, civil society, collective action, Community Development Resource Association, community managed disaster risk reduction, community participation, Cordaid, Deborah Eade, development jargon, disaster risk reduction, DRR, evaluation, foreign aid, foreign assistance, fundamentalism, Global Focus Aotearoa, grassroots initiatives, grassroots organizations, HIVOS, Horn of Africa, INGOs, InterAction, intermediate support organizations, international advocacy, international aid, international development, International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, JeCCDO, Kelly Byrnes, Keystone Accountability, Management Systems International, NGO effectiveness, NGO performance, NGO transparency, NIDOS, organizational development, Oxfam, participatory democracy, pluralism, poverty definition, Practical Action Publishing, Ronelle Burger, Sierra Leone, social capital, social justice, The Innovation Journal, Trudy Owens, Uganda 1 Comment
May 25th, 2011 - 1:01 am § in Good Practice, Reflection & Rumination
RCTs: Some “how matters” advice for donors
"Be smart about what RCTs cannot tell us. Allow space for the unseen, complex and long-term consequences of aid investments to be discovered through accompanying and complementary research methods."[...]
Tags: aid effectiveness, aid industry, aid workers, alternatives, applied research, behavioral economics, community-based organizations, Dean Karlan, development economics, donors, foreign aid, foreign assistance, grassroots organizations, international aid, international development, Jacob Appel, More Than Good Intentions, NGOs, power dynamics, randomized control trials, RCT4D, RCTs, social movements No Comments
May 24th, 2011 - 10:33 am § in Guest Bloggers, Reflection & Rumination
RCTs and aid effectiveness: Much to be said
A compilation of recent posts and a tweet debate related to randomized control trials and aid effectiveness.[...]
Tags: Abhijit Banerjee, aid effectiveness, aid industry, aid workers, alternatives, applied research, behavioral economics, community-based organizations, Dean Karlan, development economics, donors, Esther Duflo, foreign aid, foreign assistance, grassroots organizations, international aid, international development, Jacob Appel, More Than Good Intentions, NGOs, Poor Economics, power dynamics, randomized control trials, RCT4D, RCTs, social movements 7 Comments
May 24th, 2011 - 8:44 am § in Reflection & Rumination
RCTs: A band-aid on a deeper issue?
“We all want to see deeper thinking behind the doing. Where I think we differ is on some fundamental beliefs about what prevents this and what ails the aid industry overall.” A review of More Than Good Intentions: How a new economics is helping to solve global poverty[...]
Tags: aid effectiveness, aid industry, aid workers, alternatives, Amartya Sen, applied research, behavioral economics, community-based organizations, Dean Karlan, development economics, donors, foreign aid, foreign assistance, grassroots organizations, international aid, international development, Jacob Appel, More Than Good Intentions, NGOs, power dynamics, randomized control trials, RCT4D, RCTs, social movements 9 Comments
March 11th, 2011 - 8:12 am § in Reflection & Rumination
Did I fund Organization X?
We need smart people to identify what works, yes. We also need these same smart people to utilize their skills to meet organizations where they are, rather than trying to form them into versions of ourselves.[...]
Tags: aid workers, alternatives, capacity building, community participation, community-based organizations, foreign aid, foreign assistance, funding mechanisms, grassroots organizations, HIV/AIDS, international aid, international development, NGOs, organizational development, orphans and vulnerable children, OVC, small grants, social movements, Zimbabwe 6 Comments
January 17th, 2011 - 3:54 pm § in Reflection & Rumination
Confessions of a Recovering Neocolonialist on Martin Luther King Day
An uncomfortable silence fell upon the car. It seems Lovemore had forgotten, or maybe not, that there was a budding neocolonialist in his midst.[...]
Tags: aid workers, alternatives, capacity building, community-based organizations, foreign aid, foreign assistance, grassroots organizations, ICVA, INGOs, international aid, international development, Jr., local organizations, local ownership, Martin Luther King, modernism, Nelson Mandela, neocolonialism, NGOs, One Laptop Per Child, Paulo Freire, PlayPumps, racism, SCHR, Tim Ogden, Valerie Amos, Zimbabwe 5 Comments
January 13th, 2011 - 6:26 am § in Good Practice
Small is Beautiful…Grants, That Is (Part 2)
When the level of community ownership of a program or organization is adequately established, a certain amount of trust can then be relied upon for accountability in a small grants scenario.[...]
Tags: accountability, aid effectiveness, alternatives, capacity building, civil society building, community ownership, community participation, community-based organizations, evaluation, foreign aid, foreign assistance, funding applications, grassroots organizations, international aid, international development, local leadership, local sovereignty, microgrants, NGOs, small grants, social movements, UN-WOMEN 19 Comments
January 10th, 2011 - 10:39 am § in Good Practice
Small is Beautiful…Grants, That Is (Part 1)
“We all want to support the kind of people whose good work would not stop if you paid them to quit. That’s what small grants can do best.” ~Chet Tchozewski, Global Greengrants Fund[...]
Tags: accountability, aid effectiveness, alternatives, Bill Easterly, community participation, community-based organizations, Fahamu, foreign aid, foreign assistance, GHETS, Global Greengrants, grassroots organizations, international aid, international development, local leadership, microgrants, NGOs, small grants, social movements, UN-WOMEN 7 Comments
November 17th, 2010 - 10:07 pm § in Good Practice, Reflection & Rumination
161 Indicators, and then what?
1 country, 7 districts, 7 INGOs, $5 million and…161 indicators. Let’s aim for proportional expectations so we ensure monitoring and evaluation is a tool for learning and improvement, not just policing.[...]
Tags: aid workers, alternatives, capacity building, community participation, evaluation, foreign aid, foreign assistance, grassroots organizations, indicators, INGOs, international aid, international development, Lesotho, logframe, M&E, Malawi, monitoring, Most Significant Change, outcome mapping, philanthropy, RCTs, The Good Enough Guide, Zambia 6 Comments
