Phonics teaches kids the most basic building blocks of literacy: how to read and pronounce the letters, letter groups, and syllables that come together to create meaning. But phonics-based education for children can and should be more than learning to recognize words. When coupled with interactive exercises, learning to read can unlock children’s imaginations and…
Climate change makes life even harder for subsistence farmers and marginal populations. In the development field, we need to learn how to address tangible problems that block adoption of improved mechanisms. USAID’s Climate Change Adaptation Activity (CCAA) in Mali — a two-year intervention in the Mopti Region — has such an opportunity. In conjunction with…
Statistics for many regions around the world show that although women make up a significant percentage of undergraduate student enrollment, they hold only 10 percent of leadership positions in higher education. Globally, men outnumber women in higher education management, at about 5 to 1 in middle management and 20 to 1 at senior management levels.…
Social and behavior change communication (SBCC) is a mystery for many outside of the discipline. For one, it is different than behavior change communication (BCC). BCC solely focuses on promoting individual behavior change. On the other hand, SBCC also considers the social contexts, systems, and structures that lead to an enabling environment for social change…
The success of Kenya’s mobile money system, M-PESA, over the past few years has opened many people’s eyes to the potential of digital solutions to expand access to finance. In recent years, global markets have also taken notice in the lucrative opportunity posed by digital financial services or “fintech” (shorthand for the financial technology space).…
Last year was a busy one for international trade and development actors. We observed major progress in the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, continued global ratification of the World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement, proposal of the Tripartite Free Trade Area in Africa, and announcement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, all of which…
A little more than five years ago, Sidi Bouzid fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight. When he was unable to pay a bribe to be allowed to sell fruit from a wheelbarrow, a local policewoman reportedly slapped him, spat at him, confiscated his scales, and threw his cart aside, ruining the merchandise he had…
I used to deride the term “family planning.” I saw it as a sort of euphemism used to skirt around controversial aspects of in sexual and reproductive health. The term particularly bothered me when used in regard to adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) because it seemed like an attempt to hide the fact that,…
The business case for promoting in women’s economic empowerment is clear. According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute Report, expanding and improving women’s economic participation can add as much as $12 trillion to $28 trillion to the global GDP by 2025. In addition, as studies consistently affirm, an investment in a woman’s economic empowerment is…
When conducting a preliminary analysis of civil society capacity in Cambodia in September 2015, there was one topic that dominated all my meetings and interviews: the new Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations (also called LANGO). Everyone, from donors to international NGOs and local civil society organizations (CSOs), were sharing their concern about how LANGO…
Q: CEED had success using USAID’s Global Development Alliance (GDA) model in Moldova’s information technology (IT) sector. Can you describe the transformational partnership you formed with Microsoft and IBM, and the impact you expect it to have on the local IT sector? We engaged in an innovative partnership with Microsoft and IBM to create an…
There is a growing recognition that democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) needs to be integrated into programs in other sectors of development. The policy community model takes a complementary approach, integrating sector policy reform objectives into DRG-focused projects. This model, which my team and I developed under USAID’s Program Representasi (ProRep) project in Indonesia,…