Henrietta Fore, Director of Foreign Assistance and USAID Administrator, has announced her plan for reforming the US Foreign Aid system. The Center For Global Development gives a solid analysis of what she had to say. The CGD tracks this issue closely, and just started a new project on modernizing foreign assistance. The four main points […]
After the gloomy report this blog gave last January that the State Department would be forced to cut its diplomatic posts by 10%, good news comes through the wire: “Bush Aims To Hire More Diplomats“ February 4, 2008–President Bush wants to hire nearly 1,100 new diplomats to address severe staffing shortages and put the State […]
In addition to adding 1,000 new diplomats to the State Department, the President's new budget calls for 300 new USAID Foreign Service Officers and 250 people for the Active Response Corps – a group of pre-vetted civilians to respond to emergency situations. As someone who may one day want to take one of these new […]
The Islamic Development Bank transfered a $130 million anonymous donation to assist vicims of the November cyclone in Bangladesh. It is the largest private donation ever to Bangladesh.
The issue of HIV/AIDS among children is not a new one, especially as the virus continues to blight the continent of Africa, and many other developing nations. Millions of children have been given a death sentence at birth, millions more are left to suffer their dark fate alone as orphans. The number of mother […]
Teen terror suspect argues that current international law regarding to the use of child soldiers, rules out over the the governments efforts to prosecute him as a war criminal. Omar Khadr, was only 15 years old when he was captured and detained by United States military forces in July 2002, for throwing a grenade which […]
Dogooder.tv is a good place to learn about the range of philanthropy going on in the world. It is also pretty entertaining, and a worthy replacement for YouTube when you feel a need to be unproductive on the Internet. onPhilanthropy wrote a complete article on them last week.
The Center for Global Development Global Health Policy Blog explains very clearly why they are in favor of “positive price” bednets (meaning that the end user has to pay for them) rather than distributing these important anti-malaria tools for free. They also support positive pricing through a combination of public and private distribution chains. According […]
In a release issued on January 29, 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged that he United Nations impose sanctions against those countries that partake in the use of child soldiers. Ban's statement was largely related to the Children and armed conflict Report of the Secretary-General, which was issued on December 27, 2007. The report, which […]
On Wednesday of last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard the testimony of three of President Bush's nominees seeking confirmation to hold State Department positions in the bureau of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. The first to testify was James K. Glassman, whose nomination for Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy was previously discussed […]
An international study into the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) shows that each month 45,000 die from the consequences of war, disease and malnutrition. The fighting has cost the country 5.4 million lives in the last ten years, more than half of which where children, the largest death toll since World War […]
There are a lot of reasons to donate money to a cause: tax write-offs, guilt, religious beliefs, security, and compassion are just the first the come to mind. Some reasons are self-serving and others are not. Here is a case of what looks like the self-serving kind. It appears that Bill Clinton traveled to Kazakhstan […]
Children look to us, the adults for guidance and inspiration, they look to us and they see their future. Therefore it us up to us to give them images of hope, leadership, strength and justice. We give our children two options, violence and hate or peace and love. One only has to look at the […]
We all remember these famous words from President Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address: "States like these [Iran, North Korea and Iraq], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." But here are excerpts from two other State of the Union addresses given by President […]
Sean Stannard Stockton, who writes the blog Tactical Philanthropy commented Kiva.org's problem finding enough people to borrow all the money that people want to give. He rightly points out that there are probably many people who would like to borrow, but aren't able to for lack of microfinance access – leaving Kiva and its partners […]