So Argue Scholars; Ideas Build on Hudson Institute Report

The U.S. government needs to leverage its foreign assistance by partnering with foundations and nonprofits working overseas, according to Carol Adelman of the Hudson Institute and Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. They wrote a lengthy Aug. 31 article in the conservative Weekly Standard identifying nine principles of successful foreign aid projects, developed through analysis of projects from foundations and others which they deemed to have had a measurable impact.

The article follows the recent publication of the fourth Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances from Adelman’s Center for Global Prosperity, which called for a new business model for official U.S. foreign aid that reflects the role of private giving.

Adelman and Eberstadt’s specific ideas call for the government to partner with foundations to better leverage resources far beyond the initial dollar value and in ways that more successfully reach low-income regions. They argue that such leverage should be the model for most all government assistance going forward. Further, priority should be given to sustainable public-private partnerships in host countries, and to encourage local ownership and initiative. And the U.S. aid system should become more flexible and adaptable! to local contexts, with a greater willingness to take risks and even to fail.

Source: Aspen Institute

Foreign Aid, Heal Thyself: Rx for a New Approach on Development

President Obama has named Dr. Rajiv Shah to head the embattled US Agency for International  Development (USAID).  USAID long has been a backwater agency, helmed by hacks and captured by consultants who monetize AID budgets like farmers milking their cows.  But Dr. Shah is a different kind of leader, someone with origins far from the Beltway and whose point of view promises a very new approach to development.

The US has benefited from the handiwork of a small group of social entrepreneurs who are caring for the world through action.  Dr. Shah should find allies in remarkable Americans like John Wood of Room to Read; Bruce McNamer of Technoserve; and Gary White of water.org.  These are the new leaders, true revolutionaries who are modeling change with powerful models of social enterprise that blossom, not from the top-down, but bottom-up, across what Paul Collier calls “Africa-+”.  By Jonathan Greenblatt, Ethos Brands, blogging on the Huffington Post.