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Search by Keywords: Advanced Search Sign-up here! Subscription is free and allows you to receive email newsletters, alerts, and to access a comprehensive member directory and network with other development professionals. Sign-up here About this Report This Special Report provides a forum for a wide array of perspectives about donor aid to the developing world, with a focus on aid harmonization and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Participating in this Special Report are our online communities focused on: Afghanistan Reconstruction Aid Effectiveness Capacity Building for MDGs Culture & Development E-Government E-Learning Environment Food Security Gender and Development Governance HIV/AIDS ICT for Development Indigenous Issues Iraq: Relief and Recovery Microfinance Non-Governmental Organizations Population and Reproductive Health Poverty Trade Urban Development Water Resources Management     Our next Special Report "Empowering the Next Generation: Youth in the Developing World" coming in December 2006. Become a Development Gateway member, and you will be notified of our upcoming reports. Sign-up! See previous Special Reports here. Special Report The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not available From Our Members How Can Development Results Be Assured To Achieve The MDGs? The Millennium Development Goals are ambitious benchmarks to reduce poverty in the developing world by 2015. Monitoring and measuring development projects will be an important step in gauging progress toward the goals. How can countries work with donors to meet these goals? What measures are being taken to coalesce support for individual goals? A Development Gateway survey asked its users: How can development results be assured to achieve the MDGs? Pankaj Gupta – India What would really help to make aid work is to staff local aid offices with workers who do not drive SUVs, import all their food from their home countries, and who can live happily without air-conditioning. Believe me, such species exist! On a more serious note, aid (especially when channeled through NGOs) is distributed on the basis of networks of personal relationships. Aid monitoring needs a completely different model, based ruthlessly on well articulated, closely monitored programmes. There needs to be accountability, both of the aid organization staff which is managing it, and of the local partner delivering it. Catherine Zulu - Zambia You need dedicated and knowlegable staff. You need an umbrella organ to disburse funds and good office space. You need information about the areas you are targeting and to learn more about the temperaments of the people whose area you are entering. You need translators to translate English-based materials to local languages. You need follow-up of those you put under your project. You need computers to in-put data about your group. You need to treat each case as specific. We should not generalise requirements because the levels are not the same even when people are suffering from the same predicament. Storm Cunningham, U.S. There are two fundamental problems with aid in particular, and with development assistance in general: 1) The focus is usually too short-term: Aid should be the first step in an ongoing program focused on the socioeconomic revitalization based on the restoration of built and natural resources. Tying aid to such a program would tend to engage more donors for longer periods, because they can see the potential for long-term benefits that might also help reduce the impact of disasters (and the potential for armed conflict) in the future. 2) The approach is usually insufficiently integrated. Restorative development is usually divided into eight sectors, the restoration of ecosystems, watersheds, fisheries, agricultural lands, contaminated lands (brownfields), infrastructure, heritage, and catastrophe damage. Aid tends to focus on the last of those, rather than using the 'silver lining' effects of catastrophes to address as many of those sectors as possible. While it might seem that this is not affordable, the fact is that such integration is actually the key to attracting larger amounts of funding from a far greater spectrum of donors. Mohanna Haddad – Jordan To achieve development results, you need: a) more effective control of investments and returns andreinvestment; b) involvement of specialized people in managing the development aids projects; c) production-oriented projects; d) projects operated under the guidance and administration of people installed for this purpose outside the grasp of the ruling regimes; e) projects that employ the people of the poverty group; f) projects that satisfy the wage criteria of the people concerned (the poor); g) projects oriented to education; h) aid outside the reach of the exploitative hands of the vested hierarchy. Cornelius Hofmann – Nicaragua Substitute current output indicators with impact indicators. Looking at it as a business transaction, those who 'buy', i.e. the receivers, have almost no back-impact on what is done because it's received as a 'gift' and many times those who pay, i.e. the donors, have no idea about the impact of final results. Intermediate agencies, both donor and receiver, tend to implement an accounting-type of evaluation in which input is used to produce output, regardless whether the output served any purpose. These are exactly the mechanics that provoked the collapse of the former 'socialist' block. Ashok Sharma - India A quick questionare from NGOs in all countries could well summarize their vision, approach and the passion that an NGO possesses to achieve the goals with best efforts. Funding to NGOs must come direct and the new and upcoming improvement activists groups must be equally included while providing aid component. Dave Warren – U.S. An international forum on aid to developing countries should be convened on a periodic basis to place issues in a larger, global context. Forum reports should be disseminated to all media for full disclosure to the public. This also places national policies on foreign aid in the larger context hopefully leveraging public opinion. Brenda Anugwom – Nigeria We need to give the people a chance once in a while in a forum or anything of a sort to air their views about the working of these donors. There should also be just selection of graduates for employment. Most government officials impose their relations on these agencies for employment while better qualified citizens are not given a chance to get employed. Employment then becomes for those who 'know' the government of the day. I have been a victim. Norbert Wilhelm – Germany Much better checking about what beneficiaries need. Independent control, not only of the process, but also a checking of the technical content of all steps of a project would help to make aid more effective and reduce corruption. For me World Bank practice in this is not convincing. One should also look for projects with the potential to be repeated by the poor in the sense of a snowball effect. What I call 'reachable technology' could be one of those approaches. But it would need capacity for documentation, distribution (over the Internet to the multipliers) and research. This would also increase the ownership and self confidence of the poor. The technical knowledge of the NGOs should be improved. V.K. Shrivastava - India For aid to be effective any aid delivery process should have a built-in mechanism to ensure that it is utilized for capacity development of the poor to generate perennial employment for themselves. Moreover the granting agencies should seek grassroot level aid effectiveness report from the recipient country. This report should be required only after an independent audit is made regarding the use of the aid money, so as to ascertain the truth. For any aid to be granted, there should be an effective recipient donor partnership. Any aid should be allowed only if the prospective recipient pledges at least twenty percent of the total programme outlay. Zbigniew Zych – Poland Supervision by highly qualified and independent, and certified if possible, managers, appointed by donor countries, organizations etc. They should be recruited and educated, taught mostly in countries where the help is directed. Voluntary or semi-voluntary workers, like the Peace Corps, should be engaged to constitute the teams. Henrietta Lahai – Sierra Leone Ways to ensure that aid leads to effective results are: proper programme planning, administration, and monitoring at all stages; ensuring transparency by undertaking audio-visual campaigns to educate people within communities about the project; maintaining and posting monthly accounts and book-keeping records of all expenditure incurred at each phase or stage of the project; effective economic management; and preparing and submitting an Annual Report to the Funding Agency to appraise them about how aid funds have been spent and project progress. Sunday Adimula – Nigeria Address the issue of the three evils bedeveling developing countries: poverty, disease and corruption. It is only then that aid can actually be used for the intended purpose instead of being diverted to other uses. Ensuring community participation is also very important. Jane Thomas - UK In the 20 years I've worked in development projects in Asia, I have never seen what could be called an aid programme being 'accountable for development results. I simply have never seen, for example, an NGO or donor plan developed in a public, participatory way, then reported on in public, or 'beneficiaries' given a chance to question what has happened. When I work with indigenous NGOs, they are often blamed by international NGOs as not 'being accountable', but the indigenous NGOs have never seen accountabilty from the international NGOs or anyone else. As they often don't see it from their own governments, they have no one to emulate. SpecialsBody3Sec25 The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not available Email this page Sign-up Quick Poll From Our Members How did Development Gateway members respond to our Aid Harmonization Survey questions? What helps or hinders donor cooperation in developing countries? What tools and mechanisms best support aid harmonization? Security & Development: Why Aid Effectiveness Matters (NEW) Kazuo Sunaga Minister Japan Mission to UN Read Global Financing For the MDGs: What's Possible? John W. McArthur Deputy Director UN Millennium Project  Read Aid Harmonization: A New Paradigm for Donors? Richard Manning Chairman OECD/DAC  Read Building Know-How in Africa: Where are the Results? Soumana Sako Executive Secretary African Capacity Building Foundation Read Civil Society: Helping to Shape Policy Kumi Naidoo Secretary-General CIVICUS Read Points of View: Aid Donors Read interviews with multilateral and bilateral donors and an aid policy thank tank about the complexities of donor aid harmonization. Read Points of View: Aid Recipients What do countries think about aid harmonization as a development tool? Read interviews from Laos and Nicaragua. Read Points of View: Civil Society How are civil society and the private sector working with the public sector on the blueprint to disburse US$3.5 million in tsunami aid in Indonesia? Read In Numbers How does donor support for the MDGs stack up? Charts and graphs measuring aid flows and public support- click here. Partners

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