Abed gave up his corporate career to join Bangladesh’s liberation [...]]]> NYU Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship 2007-2008 Speaker Series??Fazle Hasan Abed, Founder & Chairman, BRAC was educated in Dhaka and Glasgow Universities, before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in London. He returned home in the late 1960s to work as an executive with Shell Oil.

Abed gave up his corporate career to join Bangladesh’s liberation movement and thereafter started BRAC in 1972.??Under Abed’s leadership, BRAC has grown into one of the world’s largest NGO’s with over 100,000 staff members and an annual budget of more than $430 million, 78% of which is self-financed. BRAC’s micro-finance programme, with 6 million borrowers, has cumulatively disbursed $4 billion. More than 1.5 million children are currently enrolled in 52,000 BRAC’s schools and over 3 million have already graduated. BRAC’s health programme reaches over 100 million people in Bangladesh with basic healthcare services and programmes for TB, Malaria and HIV/AIDS. BRAC has, in recent years, taken its range of development interventions to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan.

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For the most part, the findings are clear: while many donors and partner country governments have made [...]]]> How did we do in making aid better? Did we comply with the Paris Declaration? This is the full stocktaking report from Busan, Korea’s Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held last 29 November to 1 December 2011.

For the most part, the findings are clear: while many donors and partner country governments have made significant progress towards the targets that they set themselves for 2010, few of them have been met. Partner country authorities appear to have gone further in implementing their commitments under the Paris Declaration than donors, though efforts – and progress – also vary significantly across countries and donor organisations.

This report sets out evidence of progress and challenges in making aid more effective. This evidence should help forge a consensus beyond Busan that aid – and its effectiveness –represents only one element of a broader landscape of development finance and joint efforts to make aid more effective can and should inform a broader development effectiveness agenda. Free preview of the report here.

I mage source: aidwatch.concordeurope.org

When Maya Angelou set out to write her classic poem on a woman’s work, she probably did [...]]]> Following the launch of the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) initiative during the fourth High-Level Forum in Busan, South Korea, Shaista Hussain shares her thoughts on improving project design to ensure the collection of gender-disaggregated data.

When Maya Angelou set out to write her classic poem on a woman’s work, she probably did not realize the challenges generations ahead would have to deal with, in capturing the woman’s work in empirical data.

When world leaders gathered in Busan in November 2011 for the fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4), it was a chance for them to take stock of how international development dollars are spent, how governments work, and in turn, how development partners contribute to national and global goals.  Gender equality was a top priority at HLF-4 with champions of this cause such as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading the way.  There was also a sober acknowledgement that despite all efforts to mainstream gender equality across the world, it has not been achieved in any one country.  It is widely accepted that no country, economy, society, or community can thrive when half of its population is marginalized. And yet, we lag behind in delivering on gender results, or at times, underreporting on gender issues.

What gets measured, gets noticed, goes an old saying. At the special session on gender at the HLF-4, Secretary Clinton announced the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) initiative.  “EDGE is a new initiative to improve the availability and use of statistics that capture gender gaps in economic activity. It capitalizes on the United States’ call to action at the May 2011 OECD ministerial session on gender and development and builds on recommendations of the U.N. International Agency and Expert Group on Gender and Statistics.” Often, Clinton said, loans are given to small business enterprises without assessing how many of these are owned or run by women.  Consequently, she said, “women continue to face difficulties in accessing credit”.  The EDGE initiative is a welcome investment to improve the capacity of the governments and institutions to collect and analyze data, disaggregated by gender.  This information, as obvious as it may sound and in reality often missing in our reporting, will help feed into public policy, providing decision makers with evidence  and insights on how their actions (or inactions) are affecting women and girls differently than they do men and boys.  It is an effort to emphasize the ‘power’ in ‘empowerment’.

This brings me to the next question:  Are we under reporting our work on gender? “Of course not!” you may dismiss my question upfront. After all, with all the gender focus in the development sector, how can our work go underreported?  But a careful look at the project’s Design and Monitoring Framework (DMF) leaves much to be desired.  Despite all the hue and cry to focus on gender results, development projects often lack to disaggregate data by gender including gender-disaggregated data in the indicators and baseline.  We still see indicators that speak of persons without disaggregating the data.  We still note opportunities to have indicators that reflect the work we do to contribute to women’s benefits in our projects but they seem to go unnoticed given the rush with which projects are designed.  And that is another reminder for us all to focus more on the design aspect.  A project is only as strong as the collaborative efforts that are put in by all stakeholders in the design process to ensure smooth phasing in the implementation phase,   ensuring that the project delivers intended results.  If we want the projects to deliver effectively on the promised results to stakeholders, the project’s DMF serves as a reminder to reflect on what the project must achieve and a platform where data must be disaggregated to reflect on all the contributions which we hope to achieve.

Shaista Hussain, Project Management Specialist

VFs are the new kids on the block who can work closely with the main conference facilitators like [...]]]> Have you ever attended conferences that have lots of: (a) boring Powerpoint presenters; (b) brainstorming but too little documentation; or (c) actions but flat and text-heavy post-conference reports? Well, it’s time to bring-in the Visual Facilitator (VF)!

VFs are the new kids on the block who can work closely with the main conference facilitators like you. They draw and use symbols, images and words to capture the group conversations. They use visual facilitation techniques to build the knowledge, experience and capacity of groups and enable them to reach their desired outcomes. Their results are captivating visual record of the group’s memory about what happened.

Visual facilitation is now part of your facilitation arsenal. It outlines group processes and agendas, captures conversation themes and content, and highlights forward steps and actions. Like it or not, VFs can creatively use flip charts, brown papers on a wall, whiteboards, transparencies, templates and more recently, iPads to do the drawings. They capture ideas, engage participants, clarify the important conversation themes and (more importantly!), illustrate the decisions made. Harvard thought that VFs are here to stay!

VFs understand the power of visuals for boosting group engagement. They use symbols and images that are appealing, powerful, engaging and creatively represent the concepts covered by the group. In short, VFs benefits can be summed up in three words beginning with the letter “i”, VFs can: (a) integrate, (b) include (everyone), and (c) inspire.

Here’s a brief explanation.

Your Move. Why not consider inviting a VF in your next facilitation engagement. In the meantime, you can learn more (or even become a VF) by:

(1) Buy and read a book.

(2) Attend a 7-part YouTube e-Learning course.

(3) Join the International Forum of Visual Practitioners.

(4) Attend the Melbourne IAF Building Capacity through Facilitation for Oceania Conference in March.

As the year ended, COSO has successfully piloted two back-to-back Results-focused Project Design and Management (RfPDM) courses in Kathmandu, Nepal. 45 participants from various Government departments and Nepal resident mission attended the training courses.

These courses had many firsts! One, it applied the blended-learning method which enabled the participants to go through [...]]]> [[Show as slideshow]] 

As the year ended, COSO has successfully piloted two back-to-back Results-focused Project Design and Management (RfPDM) courses in Kathmandu, Nepal. 45 participants from various Government departments and Nepal resident mission attended the training courses.

These courses had many firsts! One, it applied the blended-learning method which enabled the participants to go through our e-Learning module for four-weeks with email facilitated mentoring support. Second, the two batches attended 2-day face-to-face courses. These were patterned after ADB’s classic 5-day RfPDM courses. Third, a one-hour DMF clinic that critically diagnosed seven key projects in the NRM’s portfolio. The clinic reviewed: (a) Subregional Transport Enhancement Project, (b) Air Transport Capacity Enhancement Project, (c) SASEC Information Highway Project, (d) DMF of Energy Access and Efficiency Improvement Project, (e) Second Rural Finance, (f) Road Connectivity Sector 1, and (g) Information and Communication Technology Development Project. Relevant NRM staff attended the clinics with their project counterparts.