Showing category "Aid Effectiveness" (Show all posts)
Jessica Jackely, co-founder of Kiva and the newly
launched Profounder, gave an intensely personal talk at TEDGlobal last
week. It was met with a standing
ovation and actually, it was the single talk that brought tears to my eyes. In addition to conveying her deep
passion for development, Jessica had some very insightful things to say about
the psychology of philanthropy and the mechanisms with which those who give
engage with those who receive.
According to Jackley, the exchange that cha... Continue reading ...
Needless to say, I am fortunate to be surrounded by extremely brilliant and passionate people here at Harvard. I should have included contributions from them at the onset of this blog, but late is better than never. A few of the first year MPAIDs wrote the letter below to our school paper in response to the Harvard's response to the earthquake in Haiti.
This is one of several guest contributions I will be adding over the next few days.
* * *
Dear Editors of the Harvard Kennedy Citizen, The...
Ken Bank's recent post "Social Mobile and the Missing Metrics" really started my wheels turning. Among many other things, it started me thinking about how we could be smarter in implementation so as to facilitate true impact evaluation. The first thing that came to mind is Oportunidades, formerly known as Progressa, the famous social assistance program in Mexico that made cash transfers contingent on school attendance and visits to health clinics. When Opportunidades rolled out, they couldn'... Continue reading ...
I’m taking a class on bridging research and
policy with Rohini Pande and Sendhil Mullainathan this semester. Each week we have to answer discussion questions related to
our readings, and last week mine was chosen to share with the class. I figure that’s a pretty good sign it’s
worth sharing with the world at large as well.
In your view what are (up to) three important principles that an international organization should follow in allocating development aid?
I’m going to take a slig... Continue reading ...
In preparation for a recent interview, I readied myself to answer the question: What would you do with $1B to make the world a better place? I highly recommend the thought experiment. Here's where I landed.
I'd spend it grants, debt, and equity for entrepreneurs, with innovations that address the failures that are prevalent in developing countries. Failures of the market and failures in public service delivery. Simply put, many of the systems in place just don't work with the resources and i... Continue reading ...
My boyfriend's wonderful mother Martha wanted to show her support of my decision to go into development and specifically to spend my summer in Liberia. Late last July, she sent an email with a gesture of her support and admiration. She would give money to whatever cause I wanted it Liberia.
I was touched, of course. What wasn't obvious as I read her email was how eye opening the decision process that ensued would be. For the first time I actually had the philanthropist hat on. I didn't wan... Continue reading ...
I went down to New York earlier this week to attend Liberia's second annual foundations meeting. It was an exciting opportunity for me to meet the leaders of the foundations engaged in Liberia and present the work I did this summer regarding opportunities for philanthropic support for technology.
I'm inspired by the outstanding group of foundations supporting Liberia. Their commitment to the country runs deep, evident in their willingness to engage on myriad initiatives both within and acros... Continue reading ...
Part of what drew me to Liberia was my
interest in understanding best practices in international aid. It's
no secret that aid is often inefficient at best and ultimately
counterproductive at worst. Unlike
others, I do not believe that this unfortunate fact is a justification to throw
the baby out with the bath water.
I believe that there is a role for assistance, and if my path takes me
in that direction, I want to know how to do it well. I knew some of the mistakes that these org... Continue reading ...
My bed nets post has gotten me thinking more about the issue people are raising with the status quo of aid today - that it inhibits the ability of local capacity to develop and to find local solutions to the problem. There's a lot to be said for this argument. Western NGOs sweeping in like white knights and moving on to the next development fad du jour, particularly when they wipe out local producers, leave developing countries without the capacity to solve their problems over the long term... Continue reading ...
Yesterday was world Malaria Day. The social media community has
embraced malaria of late, with the "king of twitter" Ashton Kutcher
donating $100,000 to the cause after beating CNN to 1M twitter
followers and some of twitter's loudest voices such as Evan Williams
(CEO of twitter) and Kevin Rose (Founder of Digg) tweeting to garner
support for the cause. Supporting the distribution of malaria nets has
become the hot development cause du jour. This has created quite
a stir in some corners of t... Continue reading ...
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