Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective

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I have been having an ongoing discussion on leveraging social media on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals in one of the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA forums. I am not claiming to be an expert in this area, just an interested participant. This blog is basically my ongoing personal attempt to marry Web 2.0 to global activism. Below are other online resources found in my web-trekking. They are very extensive and expansive resources so rather then trying to post fully about them here I am including then under Learning More About the Issues and Supporting Millenium Development Goals "In the Trenches".

Development Gateway Foundation and dgCommunities are sites created with professionals in mind, but they are also great educational resources, including the article Millennium Development Goals at Midpoint: Where do we Stand and Where do we Need to go?

The Development Gateway Foundation is an international nonprofit organization that provides Web-based platforms to make aid and development efforts more effective around the world.

It envisions a world in which the digital revolution serves people everywhere – creating greater opportunity through increased access to critical information; greater reliance on local capabilities; and more effective, better coordinated international aid.

dgCommunities is both a place to find knowledge resources focused on development issues and an interactive space where you can share your own work, participate in discussions, find people with similar interests and more. We have more than 36,000 members worldwide - and over half are in developing countries.

Web-Based Platforms for Effective Aid and Development

The foundation provides Web-based platforms for more effective aid and development efforts around the world focusing on three areas where even small investments in information and communications technology can make a major difference:

• Effective government – enabling better aid management and coordination, and more efficient and transparent government procurement.
• Knowledge sharing and collaboration – leveraging the Internet for online communications among development practitioners worldwide.
• Local partner programs in nearly 50 countries – connecting developing country organizations into a global network to empower them to use information and communications technologies to bolster local development efforts.

Areas of interest are the focus on Aid Effectiveness and Best Practices, which included the article that first brought me to this online resource, Implications for Aid Practice: Taking a citizen’s perspective (pdf).

World Wide AIDS Day Business Struggles Business Answers

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This blog holds the belief that it will be impossible for governments or with entities substantially dependent upon governments to succeed alone in meeting any of the Millennium Development Goals. It also holds the belief that implementing global health care systems to address challenges such as HIV/AIDS will require sound business practices. Those business practices in turn require global reach into some of the poorest countries and that can be provided through United Nation resources, many of which are highlight within these posts. It is going to require a partnership, it is going to required thousands of partnerships.

One of the resources of this website is the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, found under Global News Sources, which reports on both the good and bad acts of businesses around the world. The articles below are a sampling taken from their site.

They reported on 11/28/08 that Levi Strauss & Co. Commemorates World AIDS Day 2008 by making a grant to the HIV Collaborative Fund to support people living with HIV/AIDS around the globe in their fight for treatment, care and support.

The role of businesses in addressing AIDS is not limited to large American companies. While we may think of AIDS in Africa being an affliction of the absolutely destitute, business enterprises in Ethiopia are also exploring means of addressing the challenge by translating intent into action in Ethiopia 11/27/08.

The Ethiopian Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS(EBCA) [a subsidiary of , GTZ Engineering Capacity Building Program, the World Bank Institute and the Rapid Results Institute implemented a pilot programme to achieve rapid HIV results within businesses in Ethiopia in 100 days Tadesse Tekallign of Crown Cork and Can Share Company [said],The pilot project is creating new best practices on HIV in Ethiopia's private sector. The companies are finding their own solutions and tackling challenges quickly.

This article is from Tanzania. 18 media houses launch HIV/Aids policies [Tanzania] 16 Nov 2008.

A landmark step in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Tanzania's media industry is to be marked today when 18 media houses launch their workplace policies on HIV/AIDS…The policies…[will address] prevention, treatment, care, support and reduction of stigma and discrimination within the media houses.

This report from two days earlier on 11/26/08 is on the views of a United Nations Development Programme expert on HIV/Aids in the Arab region who urged a private sector role in Aids awareness [Qatar]. UNDP Regional HIV/Aids and UNAIDS Joint United Nations Program on AIDS are two of many programs of the United Nations addressing global health and HIV/AIDS.

Speaking at a Qatar Petroleum HIV/Aids workshop, HARPAS UNDP Regional HIV/Aids [of the UNAIDS Joint United Nations Program on AIDS] programme co-ordinator for Arab states Dr Khadija Moalla said it is high time for the private sector to get 'smart' and make interventions on HIV in order to halt the spread of the disease among young adults social and health planning adviser at Dr Laila Ishrair the General Secretariat for Development Planning hinted that a draft law on human rights of people living with HIV will be sent[to] the Minister of Health, the law include[s] rights to work, to housing, to treatment as well as protection against discrimination.

Again, these are only some of the examples that can be found on the web. Other avenues of inquiry could include what is the economic impact of fighting against AIDS in a developing country. Jeffrey Sachs chaired a World Health Organization commission looking at the links between epidemic disease and economic stagnation, and to play a part in the setting up of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Here are other HIV/AIDS articles from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

Related posts
World Wide AIDS the Tragedy
World Wide HIV/AIDS Looking For Solutions

Despite current economic climate Science moves forward Will USA provide leadership for a better world?

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One reason for maintaining my support for the free enterprise system despite the current economic crisis, which I blame on what I am calling uber-capitalism, is that I still see free enterprise as the best means of fueling innovation, including scientific innovation. That may be in part why SciDev.Net calls for the United States to take a lead role in advancing science as a means of addressing the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals.

SciDev.Net says that according to an editorial in Nature,science is on the rise. "Science and innovation continue to grow in developing countries, despite the current economic climate."

Quotes: Science on the rise, despite current economic climate - SciDev.Net

• According to a report published by TWAS, The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, even smaller countries such as Chile, Malaysia, Rwanda and Vietnam are prioritising investment in higher education and technology.
• Whereas countries borrowing from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were previously told to cut back on government spending, now there is talk of rebuilding and strengthening public institutions. And this is likely to be the case for both richer and poorer nations. Read more »

The same SciDev.Net makes the case that the world's poor deserve better US leadership. Not just more funding, but the vision of leadership. "The US election has implications for science and foreign aid policy, and so for the poorest people across the developing world."

Quotes: The world's poor deserve better US leadership - SciDev.Net

• Enhancing efforts to tackle global poverty will be particularly important; not just by providing direct assistance like food aid, but also by helping poor countries improve their science and technology capacities.
• The more that the United States becomes identified with such efforts, the less it will be accused of merely pursuing its own commercial and military interests. And the more that such countries generate sustainable economic growth, feed their people and create new jobs, the less they will become breeding grounds for fundamentalist-driven protest. Read more »

To do this the US science office must promote global collaboration according to SciDev.Net."The White House science office must boost science and technology for international cooperation on many fronts, says Rodney W. Nichols."

Quotes: US science office must promote global collaboration - SciDev.Net

• In November 2008, a report from the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC (OSTP 2.0) outlined best practices for global responsibilities in the OSTP. These include: leading international S&T policy and activities in organisations such as the G8, World Bank, and all major bilateral and multilateral S&T initiatives; and working with the State Department and USAID, as well as other parts of the US government, to put S&T at the heart of development strategies.

• In the United States, as in most developed countries, tight science budgets are subject to increasingly stringent tests to justify their contribution to national wealth or productivity — leading to international cooperation being seen as either "giving away knowledge" or a "humanitarian luxury". Such scepticism is unwarranted. A rising tide of international research collaboration — for example to develop safe and reliable nuclear power — will help lift all the national boats of economic development. Protectionism and hyper-nationalism are the enemies of the world's scientific progress. Almost all private companies — from General Electric to Microsoft, from Intel to Pfizer — realise that cross-national collaboration in research, development, manufacturing, marketing and distribution is essential. It is time the government does too.

• Modern research and development (R&D) toward socio-economic goals absolutely demand global links, and this need intensifies every day.
• The government's next big hurdle is reforming the entire ensemble of US foreign aid, which totals almost US$25 billion, to infuse S&T into all goals aimed at improving the lives of people in the developing world. Read more »

Taking the Measure of Chronic Poverty

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This weblog is big on the numbers. Helping Understanding With Numbers at the left hand column features sites, including GapMinder, that provide a better understanding of the world through statistics.

The ability to accurately measure the extent of the problems facing the world, the challenge required to overcome those problems, and the effectiveness of the solutions devised takes the number crunchers. This blog has already featured the International Budget Project which builds civil society budget capacity to enhance public participation and to combat poverty and teaches others How to use Budget Analysis to Advance Human Rights (pdf) .

The Chronic Poverty Research Centre is another such organization that uses numbers to educate world leaders and us on the devastating impact of not addressing the Millennium Development Goals.

· CPRC - Chronic Poverty Reports Area - Report 2008-9

CPRC is an international partnership of universities, research institutes and NGOs established in 2000 with initial funding from the UK's Department for International Development.

• Four years ago, the Chronic Poverty Research Centre published the Chronic Poverty Report 2004-05. This was the first major international development report to focus on the estimated 320 to 445 million people who live trapped in chronic poverty – people who will remain poor for much or all of their lives and whose children are likely to inherit their poverty. These chronically poor experience multiple deprivations, including hunger, under-nutrition, illiteracy, lack of access to safe drinking water and basic health services, social discrimination, physical insecurity and political exclusion. Many will die prematurely of easily preventable deaths.

Diigo tags: poverty, odi, mdg