Great Expectations, Rising Impatience: A Watershed Moment for U.S. Foreign Assistance
Posted on 27 April 2010 | 2 responses
By Sherine Jayawickrama
On April 21, a panel on Seizing Opportunities to Enhance U.S. Aid Effectiveness brought NGO and U.S. government perspectives together in a lively exchange (video below and blog post follows). Professor Nicholas Burns, from the Harvard Kennedy School, moderated the panel. Panelists were: Steve Feldstein, Professional Staff Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.S. Congress; Paul O’Brien, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy, Oxfam America; Jonathan Quick, President and CEO, Management Sciences for Health; and Leon “Skip” Waskin, Senior Development Advisor, QDDR Leadership Team, U.S. State Department.
This is a watershed moment for articulating a clear vision for U.S. global development policy, revamping U.S. capacity to deliver effective foreign assistance and modernizing nearly 50-year-old legislation governing U.S. foreign assistance. The Obama Administration’s commitment to elevating global development as a foreign policy priority set exceedingly high expectations, especially among the NGO community.
However, with the QDDR process mired in delays, the PSD unlikely to become public and the aid reform process stalled until the PSD and QDDR processes set a clear direction, a sense of impatience is rising. If the Obama Administration waits much longer to communicate a clear vision and goal for U.S. engagement in global development, it risks losing the momentum and credibility to oversee a long-awaited process of reform.
Mathare Youth Sports Association: Giving Youth a Sporting Chance
Posted on 26 April 2010 | 1 response
By Mariana Andrade
The Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) was founded in 1987. It now involves over 20,000 youth in programs that link sport to a range of community activities designed to help overcome the hardships of the Mathare slums in Nairobi, where over half a million people live without water, electricity and sanitation. This article is based on a phone conversation with MYSA founder Bob Munro.
Joe Achola, at 25, is one the youngest elected politicians in Kenya. Dennis Oliech is one of the stars playing in Ligue 1, France’s top professional soccer league. Charity Muthoni, who celebrated her 12th birthday in January, is chair-elect of one of MYSA’s executive committees and has a constituency of 2000 youths. These three outstanding young people are representative of MYSA’s motto: “Giving youth a sporting chance”. Their stories, and those of many other MYSA alumni, are living examples of how sport can be used to transform lives.
Creating tomorrow’s leaders – One of the greatest achievements of the MYSA model is that the organization is owned and managed by the youth themselves. According to Bob Munro, we all respond to challenges, therefore you need to give kids a chance to test themselves and their leadership. And they have done just that. MYSA’s youth leadership, whose average age is 15, makes all the decisions regarding the organization, including defining how money is spent. These young leaders learn valuable leadership, organizational and budgeting skills that can then be applied in their adult careers.
Coming Soon! The Sport and Development Series
Posted on 25 April 2010 | 6 responses
In the coming weeks (beginning tomorrow), this blog will feature a series of guest posts on sport and development in order to shine a light on NGOs conducting inspiring work in this field.
Sport is one of the greatest tools for development. It is one of the few truly universal languages in the world and evokes a passion and sense of belonging that transcends borders and barriers and that is rarely replicated in other settings. Sport promotes equality, respect, acceptance and empowerment. It gives people a license to dream and permission to hope.
Fighting gender and ethnic discrimination, providing a source of income to local communities, promoting health awareness, organizing environmental cleanups, promoting peace and understanding, and bringing education and sport to refugees are just some examples of the different ways in which the tremendous power of sport can be harnessed to improve and transform people’s lives.
The Challenges of Haiti: A Critical Test for International NGOs
Posted on 15 April 2010 | No responses
The last session of this year’s NGOs & Development Study Group will be held on Thursday, April 22 from 4.00 to 5.00 pm in Belfer L4 at Harvard Kennedy School.
The session is titled “The Challenges of Haiti: A Critical Test for International NGOs.” Peter Bell, Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and former President & CEO of CARE USA will lead this session. He will discuss what international NGOs might learn from their mixed record in Haiti and how they can seize the opportunity to do things differently (and better). Peter will also speak to the specific pressures that international NGOs are coming under, given the magnitude of resources raised for Haiti, and the opportunity to “build back better” including building local capacity and better governance.
Seizing Opportunities to Enhance U.S. Aid Effectiveness: The State of Play and Ways Forward
Posted on 14 April 2010 | 1 response
The Humanitarian & Development NGOs domain of practice at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations is pleased to host a panel on Seizing Opportunities to Enhance U.S. Aid Effectiveness: The State of Play and Ways Forward.
Wednesday, April 21, 4.00 pm – 5.30 pm
Weil Town Hall (Belfer L-1), Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138The panel will be moderated by Professor Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics, Harvard Kennedy School.
International Development Conference: April 9-10 at the Harvard Kennedy School
Posted on 9 April 2010 | 1 response
The 2010 Harvard International Development Conference gets underway today (it runs from the afternoon of April 9 through the evening of April 10) at the Harvard Kennedy School. Run by students, this conference usually attracts some 400 participants from a variety of disciplines – scholars and practitioners – fosters discussion on several particularly timely themes. The five discussion tracks this year are:
- Track 1 – Harnessing Technology in Development
- Track 2 – Energy and Environment: Sustainable Solutions for Development
- Track 3 – Contemporary Challenges
- Track 4 – Unusual Suspects: Pushing Development Frontiers
- Track 5 – Tapping into the Global Economy
To register for the conference, click here.
Charity Navigator’s Proposed Rating System: A View from CARE
Posted on 7 April 2010 | No responses
In response to this blog’s March 7 invitation of a variety of views on Charity Navigator’s decision to change its rating system (to reflect accountability and outcomes measures in addition to financial metrics), Steve Lawry shared his perspective, George E. Mitchell and Hans Peter Schmitz contributed their opinion, and Ken Berger and Robert M. Penna responded with Charity Navigator’s view. In this post, an NGO viewpoint is provided by Maliha Khan from CARE USA.
By Maliha Khan
I have been following the exchange that started with Sherine Jayawickrama’s March 7, 2010 blog post “Charity Navigator’s Proposed Rating System: Thoughts, Anyone?” The discussions have been interesting. Everyone has made very coherent and convincing arguments for and against Charity Navigator’s new “triad” assessment system.
While not advocating one way or the other for Charity Navigator’s new system, the one thing I would strongly advocate is that the system be implemented slowly, in stages and with considerable consultation with a variety of stakeholder organizations. The concept is good, but the devil is in the details!
Charity Navigator is not the only organization pushing to have more accountability in demonstrating effectiveness in development, and international NGOs are certainly included within these debates. Several new types of philanthropy and giving also require more direct involvement of the donors and demonstration of the “payoff” of the investments made. All this plus internal pressures are pushing many organizations to grapple with the question “how do we demonstrate our effectiveness and impact?”
Calling Social Entrepreneurs: Do You Have the Right Ecosystem to Innovate and Scale Up?
Posted on 4 April 2010 | 1 response
By Lakshmi Iyer
Most of us interested in solving humanitarian or development issues get excited about the term ‘social innovation’ – i.e. finding new, sustainable models to achieve high social impact.
But are we paying attention to what drives innovation? Why is it that new ideas that solve age-old problems usually come from specific geographical areas? In the context of reverse innovation, what can be done to promote social entrepreneurs locally? Finally, thinking one step after innovation, what can be done to scale up those innovative solutions to social challenges?
On March 25, the NGOs & Development study group at the Hauser Center held a discussion on ‘Leveraging Social Entrepreneurship for Development: Strategies to Promote Innovation and Leadership’, led by Nishith Acharya, Executive Director of the Deshpande Foundation, who discussed exactly this.
Charity Navigator Responds
Posted on 31 March 2010 | 3 responses
In response to this blog’s March 7 invitation of a variety of views on Charity Navigator’s decision to change its rating system (to reflect accountability and outcomes measures in addition to financial metrics like overhead), Steve Lawry shared his perspective, and George E. Mitchell and Hans Peter Schmitz contributed their opinion. In this post, Ken Berger and Robert M. Penna respond with Charity Navigator’s view.
Ken Berger and Robert M. Penna, Ph.D.
On March 7, 2010, Sherine Jayawickrama began on these pages a discussion of Charity Navigator’s proposed new rating system. As many readers know, Charity Navigator (CN) is the largest US agency rating nonprofit organizations. Since its launch in 2002, CN has relied and reported upon financial information contained in the federal 990.
It is no secret that over the years this rating system came under considerable censure. Critics charged that solely fiscal measures were flawed for a variety of reasons, and that CN’s ratings could be having the perverse impact of steering investment away from organizations that were actually effective, but which, because their particular circumstances – considerations not readily apparent in the 990 data - had overhead or fundraising costs higher than CN thought prudent.
We have listened to these criticisms. That is why we have announced that Charity Navigator is moving to a triad rating system, one that will retain fiscal measures (which may well be revised), but will also account for an organization’s transparency and accountability and, most importantly, its effectiveness.
Building Development Partnerships with NGOs: The Experience of Corporate Foundations
Posted on 31 March 2010 | 1 response
The next session of the NGOs & Development study group, organized by the Humanitarian & Development NGOs Domain of the Hauser Center, will be held on Thursday, April 8th from 4:00-5:00pm in Weil Town Hall (Belfer L1) at the Harvard Kennedy School. The session will be lead by Shalaka Joshi, Vice President of Global Strategies, CSO Partners, and Salimah Samji, who was formerly a Program Manager, Google.org.
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