Digital Archive....

Vrijdagmiddagborrel: Een tijd van komen en van gaan, ook voor Sylvia Borren Vice Versa - vakblad over ontwikkelingssamenwerking Iedere vrijdagmiddag bespreekt hoofdredacteur Marc Broere actuele ontwikkelingen in de sector. Vandaag aandacht voor een serieus probleem: voor oudgedienden blijkt het moeilijk om plaats te maken voor een nieuwe generatie. Greenpeace maakt het nu wel erg bont door Sylvia Borren, die al afscheid genomen had van de ngo-sector, aan te stellen als directeur. Zo krijgt jong talent nooit een kans. Voor betrokken mensen die zich vol overgave op hun zaak storten, lijkt de pensioengerechtigde leeftijd hoger dan voor gewone burgers. Afgelopen weken hebben we dat goed kunnen zien. De centrale bank van Bangladesh wil Mohamed Yunus ontslaan als topman van de door hem zelf opgerichte Grameen Bank. U weet wel: die bank van de microkredieten. Yunus is 70 jaar en eigenlijk geldt voor commerciële banken een pensioengerechtigde leeftijd van 60. Inmidd...

Grote filantropen zorgen voor quick fix Vice Versa - vakblad over ontwikkelingssamenwerking Het Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in Den Haag organiseert een reeks publieke debatten over de keuzes en uitdagingen in ontwikkelingssamenwerking. Vandaag een verslag van het debat over de betrokkenheid van de private sector in ontwikkelingssamenwerking. 'De grote filantropen', zo omschrijft Dr. Michael Edwards de grote bedrijven die aan ontwikkelingssamenwerking doen. Het bedrijfsleven gaat een steeds grotere rol spelen in ontwikkelingssamenwerking: denk aan de Gates Foundation, de Rockefeller Foundation en de Ford Foundation. De effectiviteit van deze trend wordt echter in twijfel getrokken tijdens het debat. Met het dichten van financiële gaten zorgt het bedrijfsleven enkel voor een quick fix in ontwikkelingshulp. De aanpak ondermijnt de structurele opbouw van de democratie, onder andere die van sociale instituties en ondernemerstalent. Als voormalig di...

the "Right Road" in the fight against Malaria Africa Works Richard Horton, editor of Lancet, argues in a new essay in The New York Review of Books that the Gates Foundation has chosen "the wrong road" in the fight to reduce, eliminate and perhaps even eradicate the scourge of malaria, which harms the peoples of the sub-Saharan far more than any other region in the world. Horton, himself a physician as well as the leader of a peerless medical journal, skillfully deconstructs the "silver bullet" strategy that Bill and Melinda Gates have directed their foundation (for which I once consulted) to pursue. The limits of pursuing of a vaccine are well known; Horton is only the latest to highlight that controlling the disease depends on the construction of adequate health-care systems in sub-Saharan Africa, not simply the development of effective and affordable vaccines, then delivered in what he calls the "verticalist" manner fav...

Het gaat steeds beter met Afrika Charles Kenny For those following along in Dutch... this is a piece from Ode Magazine which draws on Getting Better to make the case that Africa is making progress and governments should take some of the credit.  There will be an English version soon... Sent with Reeder  

British aid is working wonders in India – don't listen to the sceptics | Natasha Kaplinsky Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Western aid does more harm than good? Tell that to the 500,000 people who were saved from dying from TB in 2007-08 One little boy's face continues to haunt me. I met him on a visit with Save the Children earlier this year to the Sanjay slum in Rajasthan in India. His mother had named him Lucky – a name with something of a hollow ring. He can have been no more than 18 months old. Lucky had no shoes, few clothes and was living in the kind of place familiarised by Slumdog Millionaire. The Sanjay slum is home to 11,000 people. There, people live in nothing more than dirt piles, children play in raw sewage and, until recently, there was no doctor within a 10-mile radius. I couldn't help comparing Lucky to my own son, but because of where Arlo was born, he was destined for a very different life. But Luck...

What In the World is Getting Better? (With Prizes!) Global Development: Views from the Center By Lawrence MacDonald - Been discouraged about the state of the world recently? (Me, too.) Charles Kenny's new book should be at the top of our reading lists. In Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding–And How We Can Improve the World Even More, Charles argues that the quality of life–health, education, access to infrastructure, fundamental rights—has progressed at [...] Sent with Reeder  

Poor Economics Innovations for Poverty Action Blog A beautiful website was launched today for the new book by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Maps! Graphs! Data! Sent with Reeder  

The Effective Philanthropic Investor Tactical Philanthropy This is a continuation of my exploration of four core approaches to philanthropy . The Charitable Giver The Philanthropic Investor The Strategic Philanthropist The Social Entrepreneur The Philanthropic Investor seeks to invest resources into nonprofit enterprises in order to increase their ability to deliver programmatic execution. It is classic "builder" behavior as defined in George Overholser's Building is Not Buying . The Philanthropic Investor, like a for-profit investor, is primarily focused on the longer term increase and improvement in programmatic execution relative to grant size. Unlike the Charitable Giver who is looking to buy program execution that delivers a good value, the Philanthropic Investor is interested in how their grant dollars can be put to use to build the nonprofit enterprise. While nonprofit accounting does not recognize "equity" on the balanc...

The Four Core Philanthropy Approaches Tactical Philanthropy In the past, I've written critiques of strategic philanthropy and advanced the idea that an investment approach is more likely to achieve success. But my post yesterday was meant to clear a much lower bar. I'm simply trying to establish a consensus that there exists a legitimate alternative to strategic philanthropy that is distinct in its approach. My post yesterday was probably the most read post I've written in some time. It raced around Twitter and attracted comments from a number of leaders in the field. It was probably the comment from Paul Brest, president of the Hewlett Foundation and a champion of strategic philanthropy viewed alongside the comment from Paul Shoemaker, a leader of Social Venture Partners, a champion of an investment approach to philanthropy, that best illustrates the deep divide and validates the distinctiveness of the two styles. Paul Brest : "Sean has it e...

e-Zwich:Biometric Banking from Ghana Timbuktu Chronicles A world first, in Ghana. Bombastic Element reports on the debut of e-Zwich : ...Keith Breckenridge looks at Ghana's adoption of the world's first biometric banking system--basically a void card enabled by the cardholder's fingerprint--to draw a larger proportion of the population into the banking economy , raise the levels of local capitalization by drawing a much larger portion of the issued money supply into bank accounts, create a national instrument and measure of capital accumulation "in the face of a host of established informal and transnational practices that make a mockery of the post-colonial state's ability to influence and tax the economy." He argues that besides all of implementation road bumps, the scheme might actually succeed. More here African Liberty takes a contrarian view they view it as " A Colossal Waste of Resources " Sent with Reeder ...