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…
This document aims to help development professionals design trade capacity-building programs that respond to the clear-cut case for equalizing economic conditions for men and women. To assist development professionals in identifying appropriate areas for interventions, this paper gives an overview of the complex issues related to gender and trade, presented in five parts: Setting the…
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…
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,…
To meet the critical global health challenges of today’s world, the USAID Procurement and Supply Management Project (PSM) will transform global and national supply chains for essential health commodities into a supply chain that serves all people in need. In addition to optimizing supply chains, PSM applies a holistic approach to strengthening in-country supply chain…
The USAID-supported Sindh Basic Education Program (SBEP), and its partner group the Pakistan Reading Program, endeavored to increase reading scores of 450,000 children in grades 1 and 2 in the province by 2019, among other goals. One of the ways this was achieved was through an activity within the SBEP Program, the smaller Sindh Reading…
We are at a pivotal moment in the movement to combat climate change. Extreme weather events are becoming more commonplace, and the health consequences connected to rising temperatures and worsening air quality are affecting communities around the world. And although it might not be easily observable, climate change is having a dramatic economic impact as…
The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) is the lead institution in the Indonesian government for promoting sustainable fisheries as well as managing coastal areas and promoting the welfare of coastal communities. USAID has played a significant role in supporting MMAF’s establishment and capacity building to fulfill its diverse mandate. In late 2010, USAID…
Following the success of USAID’s Economic Policy Reform and Competitiveness (EPRC) project, the government of Mongolia agreed to continue its ambitious reform agenda through support and partnership with USAID. In June 2011, Chemonics International began implementing the $14 million follow-on project, Business Plus Initiative (BPI). BPI was designed to improve Mongolia’s business enabling environment, build…
The World Bank predicts that India will receive $70 billion in remittances from its diaspora around the world in 2015. In absolute terms, this is the largest volume of remittances of any country in the world (followed by China, the Philippines, Mexico, and Nigeria). It is also more than six times USAID’s entire budget request…
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls,” isn’t a new addition in the realm of development goals. It follows on the heels of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3, which sought to “promote gender equality and empower women.” However, while the MDG goal focused solely on equality in education,…