DAI News

Center for Development Excellence Delivers First Classes for Pakistani Aid Practitioners

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— The newly opened Center for Development Excellence (CDE) last week completed its first series of training modules to coach development practitioners in Pakistan on how to bid on, win, and successfully implement donor-funded projects.

The 16 attendees—representing local firms and nongovernmental organizations—were especially keen to take the training in light of international donors’ increasing commitment to Pakistan. For example, the U.S. Government plans to spend $7.5 billion over five years on development in Pakistan, and wishes to engage qualified local partners in implementing those programs.

Though numerous local Pakistani aid organizations are committed to tackling Pakistan’s development problems, many lack the expertise and organizational frameworks to take on larger, donor-funded assistance projects. Attendees said they came away from the CDE training better prepared to take on large projects, specifically complimenting the breadth of the curriculum and how it revealed areas for improvement in the attendees’ capacities.

"DAI has taken a good first step in aligning prospective beneficiaries of USAID funding in Pakistan,” said participant Ammanullah Khan of the Pakistan Center for Philanthropy. “The content of the modules touched upon all the relevant and general rules and processes that would guide the complete project cycle.”

Financed and managed by DAI, the Center draws on the company’s 40 years of research and practical experience in implementing donor-funded projects. Last week’s training was organized by and conducted at the DAI Pakistan office in Islamabad, where DAI experts Carmen Lane and Doug McLean, consultant John McElwaine, and CDE Program Director Mehreen Tanvir covered:

Competing for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts;

Project planning, execution, and reporting;

Contract compliance and financial management;

Risk management, financial controls, and audits; and

Ethics and standards of conduct.

CDE’s group training also enabled attendees to network with each other, with an eye toward future collaborations when opportunities arise. The Center, in fact, is designed to promote collaboration between local Pakistani aid organizations and development firms so they can share best practices and work together more effectively.

DAI, an employee-owned development firm founded in 1970, has worked in Pakistan for clients such as the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.K. Department for International Development. It currently implements the Pakistan Legislative Strengthening Program and the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas Capacity Building Program.

Chamber of Commerce Vows to Help South Africa Meet Diversity Goals

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Many foreign companies wish to do business in South Africa while also investing as required in the country’s black economic empowerment (BEE) objectives. But BEE legislation, designed to help black entrepreneurs and workers overcome the legacy of apartheid and enter the business mainstream, can be prohibitive to the greater business community. So can other barriers to trade.

These issues took center stage last week at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, during the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa’s 32^nd Annual General Meeting. ECIAfrica, a partly owned subsidiary of DAI, sponsored the meeting, which convened more than 100 business leaders. U.S. Ambassador Donald Gips delivered the keynote remarks.

Ambassador Gips told attendees that removing barriers to trade in South Africa was a main focus of the embassy, adding that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) welcomes ideas from Chamber members on how to improve the business climate. Compliance with the country’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act of 2007 and the crafting of equitable labor laws are chief concerns of both domestic and foreign businesses, as well as the country’s labor force.

The Chamber vowed at the meeting to continue its consultations on these issues with the country’s Department of Trade and Investment, appreciative that South Africa’s diversity initiatives strive to create and develop enterprises, prompt investment, empower black women and youth, and improve the skills and education of the labor pool, with the ultimate aim of enabling sustained growth.

To comply with South Africa’s B-BBEE scorecard, businesses operating in the country are required to invest for black laborers and businesses in the areas of ownership, management control, skills development, preferential procurement, enterprise development, and socioeconomic development. Denis Gallagher, Managing Director of ECIAfrica, noted that ECIAfrica designs and implements solutions around the procurement and economic development portions of the scorecard.

ECIAfrica's highly successful, USAID-funded South African International Business Linkages (SAIBL) program, currently in its ninth year, has just facilitated the creation of a South African Supplier Diversity Council (SASDC), whose member corporations work together to leverage resources and share knowledge, experience, and best practices in supplier diversity development.

“The member corporations of SASDC will commit to opening up more opportunities for black suppliers, whom they will certify, and where necessary also invest in the development of the certified suppliers,” Gallagher said, adding that the council is modeled after the acclaimed, New York-based National Minority Supplier Development Council.

Attendees at the Chamber meeting included some of the largest companies doing business in South Africa, including Coca Cola, Hewlett Packard, Nike, Cummins, GM, Estee Lauder, The Bank of New York Mellon, Hyatt Regency, Motorola, 3M, and Deloitte.

“ECI designs and implements solutions around procurement,” Gallagher said in his closing remarks. “For all of you who grapple with procurement and economic development as part of your [BB-BEE] scorecard, please know we can customize a solution to suit your needs.”

El Salvador Tax Reform Boosts Revenues Available for Social Investment

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

El Salvador last week concluded a five-year upgrade to its Ministry of Finance by launching systems for auditing and information technology that will help boost the country’s tax revenues.

The systems, together with new taxpayer call centers, advocacy units, criminal investigation teams, and other programs created since 2005, have so far helped the El Salvador government reap an additional $1.28 billion over projected tax collections during that period—without raising tax rates.

Robert Blau, the Charge d’ Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, Finance Minister Carlos Caceres, and Vice Minister Roberto Solórzano attended the launch event February 18, 2010, at the Hilton Princess San Salvador hotel.

The upgrade was coordinated by the Tax Policy and Administration Reform (TPAR) project, which is led by DAI and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). TPAR’s overall objective is to help El Salvador’s tax system be more transparent, efficient, and safeguarded.

“Increasing tax revenues is one of the most important factors to boosting the social investment in the country and making Salvadoran society more equitable and progressive,” said Enrique Giraldo, the TPAR Chief of Party. “The global economic crisis continues placing serious constraints on tax revenue, while the pressure for the government to spend is strong. The challenge will be to preserve the hard-won gains made by the tax administration in the face of this new economic reality.”

At TPAR’s recommendation, the ministry has also created units for case selection, tax analysis, supervision and control, strategic planning, and fiscal compliance. The new structure is projected to reduce tax evasion by 25 percent over the next three years.

USAID has been supporting El Salvador’s efforts to improve its tax administration since 2001. In 2005, USAID designed TPAR to help implement fiscal reforms enacted in 2004 and increase tax collection without increasing tax rates. Among TPAR’s accomplishments:

Prior to the creation of a Taxpayer Assistance Call Center, the tax administration served an average 200 taxpayers per day; the administration now assists 1,300 taxpayers per day in low season and 4,000 per day on peak days.

A Taxpayer Advocate Unit now protects the constitutional and legal rights of taxpayers, improving accountability in the Salvadoran tax administration.

The Case Selection and Management System automates the audit selection process rather than leaving it to tax officials’ discretion, and provides a system for monitoring the progress of those cases.

The Transfer Pricing Initiative in El Salvador and Central America is boosting transfer pricing audit capacity. The governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic participated in a TPAR-sponsored regional workshop to implement stronger transfer pricing regulation designed to thwart transnational tax cheating.

A Criminal Investigation Unit conducts investigations compliant with tax criminal law and enables the tax administration to send more robust cases to the Attorney General for prosecution.

The Anti-Corruption Unit collects and investigates alleged corruption cases within the tax administration. The unit so far has collected more than $15 million and there are more than 20 ongoing prosecutions.

A Fiscal Compliance Call Center uses an automated system to call absent and delinquent taxpayers to remind them of their obligations. These “robo-calls” in 2009 resulted in an uptick in collections of 100 percent over the proposed goals, while saving the Ministry $215,000 monthly in operational costs. Also, 45,000 people who had previously neglected to file tax returns filed their returns.

El Salvador’s tax-to-gross domestic product ratio rose from 12.2 percent in 2004 to 14.1 percent in 2007. This increase in tax yield of almost one-sixth was due to improved compliance and less evasion by taxpayers. During the 2009 worldwide recession, the tax ratio decreased to 13.3 percent in 2009 but was budgeted to be 12.9 percent due to the crisis.

Jordans IDARA Project Nominated for Global Water Use Efficiency Award

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

A DAI-led project to improve water use efficiency in Jordan has been named a finalist in the 2010 Global Water Awards, presented by the London, U.K.-based Global Water Intelligence.

The project, Instituting Water Demand Management in Jordan (IDARA), is contending for Water Efficiency Project of the Year, one of 12 categories whose winners will be named April 26 in Paris, France, at “Global Water Summit 2010:Tranforming the World of Water.” IDARA is vying for first prize in its category alongside initiatives from the Philippines and South Africa, as well as one multinational project. Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan will present the awards.

IDARA, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented through Jordan’s Water Demand Management Unit of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and the water utilities, is a wide-ranging program of water demand management initiatives aimed at driving down water usage in one of the world’s driest countries.

Global Water Intelligence, a leading publication and analyst of the international water industry, notes in its nomination announcement that Jordan is unable to meet the needs of its growing population through big engineering projects alone. Instead, the country engages citizens directly in its water conservation efforts. IDARA does this through its work on water policy, regulations, institutional support, technology, best management practice, education, and outreach. It is possibly the largest and most comprehensive demand reduction initiative in the world.

The nomination noted that IDARA’s efforts will yield a 40 percent reduction in water demand from new high-rise developments in Amman as a result of the implementation of a new advisory building code, and a 15-20 percent reduction in water demand from residential areas in IDARA’s outreach program. Private sector companies such as HSBC have joined the initiative to support water conservation projects.

Afghan Gem Dealers Join Thousands in Arizona for Leading Trade Fair

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Even as many of its export markets are derailed by ongoing conflict, Afghanistan is working on ways to satisfy the world’s demand for gemstones.

From February 2-7, 2010, 20 Afghan traders displayed their gemstones and jewelry in the Gem and Jewelry Exchange Trade Fair in Tucson, Arizona. The event attracted thousands of buyers, collectors, and enthusiasts from around the United States and the world.

Afghanistan yields some of the finest quality emerald, ruby, aquamarine, tourmaline, and kunzite. Its gold, silver, and deep blue lapis jewelry is also widely admired. In Tucson, traders displayed more than 15,000 gem specimens at the show’s Afghanistan Pavilion.

The Afghan traders were sponsored by the Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development (ASMED) Project, a DAI-implemented project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Participation in the Tuscon fair was organized in partnership with the Afghan Gemstone Traders Association.

ASMED experts consider gemstone exporting to be one of the country’s highest potential business sectors. ASMED and gemstone association officials believe that given the necessary support, within five years the country’s gemstone industry could reach export sales of more than $300 million per year.

While in Arizona, the traders visited the local ASARCO copper mining operation; the Mountain States R&D International mineralogical and geological testing laboratory, where they viewed latest techniques for substrate/mother rock removal from gem clusters; and the Caterpillar heavy mining equipment manufacturers' testing site. The visits were organized in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce's Afghanistan Reconstruction Task Force in Washington, D.C.

Participants said these visits were critical to Afghanistan's capability to export rough specimens and, eventually, cut stones to the international market. By meeting numerous buyers, retailers, and cutters at the gem show, the Afghans gained a better understanding of demand in the extended value chain—an important perspective because most of their rough material is currently traded to Pakistani intermediaries for processing and further export. The Afghan traders plan to work with ASMED’s "mines-to-market" program to solve some of the challenges Afghanistan faces in the exploration, mining, extraction, cutting, and marketing of stones for export.

At $170,000, the Afghan delegation’s overall sales were somewhat less than anticipated, reflecting weak demand that can in turn be attributed to the state of the world economy: inventory is high and buyers are accordingly tight, requesting special pricing.

But dealers expressed substantial interest in the specimens, in particular the ruby, tourmaline, and aquamarine lots, and the lapis jewelry pieces. And the Afghan traders absorbed valuable market information they can use to better price their lots and prepare their specimens, and established good contacts in the industry for potential future sales.

ASMED’s gemstone sector development project was launched in spring 2009 to revive Afghanistan’s rich gemstone and jewelry heritage. Working directly with miners, the Government of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines, and local and international gemstone dealers, USAID and its implementing partners are stimulating the gems and jewelry industry at all points along the value chain, from mines to markets, emphasizing fair-trade working practices, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability.

Under ASMED, DAI is providing technical assistance and financial support to the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector and to organizations throughout Afghanistan that support SMEs. Headquartered in Kabul, ASMED’s activities have national reach, with provincial offices in Herat, Nangarhar, and Balkh, and partner activities in Helmand, Kandahar, and Badakshan.

Other key, sustainable sectors targeted by ASMED include marble, handicrafts, carpets, agribusiness, and cashmere and wool.

DAIs James Boomgard Notes Progress in Afghanistan at Senate Roundtable

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Afghan nationals who a few years ago were being trained on development projects are now leading them; coordination between the military and development professionals working in Afghanistan is also coming together.

These positive yet unsung trends should be recognized, DAI CEO James Boomgard told the Contracting Oversight Subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, during yesterday’s roundtable at the Senate Dirksen Office Building in Washington, D.C.

“Over the past four or five years you’ve seen an enormous increase in the capacity of the professional Afghan staff to lead some of these development efforts,” Boomgard told the roundtable. “They have been on the job for two or three years and are getting it, and they can bring on new people and train them. We’re seeing a development process going on, in terms of capacity building.”

Boomgard was joined by representatives from seven other development firms for “Business Perspectives on United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Reconstruction and Development Contracts in Afghanistan.”

Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Robert Bennett (R-Utah) convened the roundtable to discuss the challenges of operating in Afghanistan, including travel, logistics, and security. Also discussed was planning for the increase in Armed Forces, civilian, and contractor personnel expected in the coming months.

“I think you all are doing admirable work,” McCaskill said. “Please convey to the people who work for you in country that we know they are outside the wire and they are doing work that is important and dangerous, and they should be admired for that.”

Boomgard reiterated his concern that USAID has been “decapitalized” in recent years and advocated for an infusion of resources and expertise for the Agency to strengthen its oversight and leadership of the immensely challenging development program in Afghanistan.

He also noted the increased coordination between the U.S. and coalition militaries with USAID and development practitioners in Afghanistan. He pointed to recent successes in areas such as Nawa, where local leaders and U.S. Marines in collaboration with development professionals from the Local Governance and Community Development program embarked on community projects in what had once been a Taliban stronghold.

“There’s a lot of collaboration [in the field] between the military and USAID at the planning level and operational level,” Boomgard said. “The most effective operations that have gone on in the last six months … have been a direct result of very close collaboration on the ground, in the right sequence, between military commanders who get it and development professionals.”

Dr. Boomgard was joined at the roundtable by representatives from Black & Veatch, Chemonics International, Creative Associates International. International Relief and Development, Inc., International Resources Group, Deloitte LLP, and The Louis Berger Group.

A webcast of the roundtable is available here. Following is the text of DAI’s prepared statement from James Boomgard, distributed prior to the roundtable.

Madame Chairman:

On behalf of DAI, let me first thank the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight for this opportunity to share some of our insight into one of the most pressing issues in U.S. foreign policy and security: the social and economic development of Afghanistan. I would also like to invite members of the Committee or their staffs to visit our projects in Afghanistan. Our employees are working with U.S. Government and Afghan partners in one of the most challenging environments on earth to create a more stable, more prosperous, and more democratic Afghanistan. We’d be delighted to show you that work.

DAI is a development company—an independent, employee-owned, mission-driven development company. Our mission is to make a difference in the world, by helping developing nations become more prosperous, fairer and more just, cleaner, safer, healthier, more stable, more efficient, and better governed. We have been pursuing that mission as an implementing partner of USAID and other development agencies for 40 years, in 150 developing countries. We currently run more than 100 projects in 65 countries, from earthquake transition assistance in Haiti and urban gardens programs for HIV/AIDS-affected women and children in Ethiopia to fiscal reform in Jordan and forest conservation in Indonesia. We work in many of the world’s most challenging environments, from sensitive post-conflict countries such as Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of Congo to current hotspots such as Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

DAI’s first engagement in Afghanistan dates back to 1976, with the design for an integrated rural development project in Mohammed Agha District. Since then, we have carried out more than 20 assignments there, including a dozen major, long-term projects. From 1989 to 1993, we implemented the Agricultural Sector Support Project, which employed nearly 1,000 Afghans while providing agricultural support and improved infrastructure for tens of thousands more; and the Narcotics Awareness and Control Project, which provided seed, fertilizer, high-value crops, farm machinery, training, and small-scale irrigation and farm-to-market road repair to farming communities that reduced or eliminated poppy cultivation.

Since 2002 we have been managing projects continuously in Afghanistan for USAID and other donors, projects such as Assisting Afghanistan to Revitalize Irrigated Agriculture (2002–2004), the Microfinance Investment and Support Facility (2003–2005), and the World Bank/IBRD’s National Solidarity Program (2003–2006), which took a participatory planning approach to develop local social and economic infrastructure through the provision of grants to Community Development Councils. Beginning in 2004, we implemented the Afghanistan Immediate Needs Project (2004–2006), working with 70,000 families in Nangarhar province on income-generating, labor-intensive subprojects that created livelihood alternatives beyond the poppy economy.

This project laid the groundwork for similar work under the highly successful Alternative Development Program, Eastern Region (ADP/E, 2005–2009), a project that won the following accolade from USAID in its end-of-project Contractor Performance Report: “The contractor has performed in an outstanding manner. It has been a singular performance well in excess of requirements to achieve success. The manner of attainment of stated goals and objectives has been commendable and serves as an example to others. The contractor has demonstrated almost prescient problem solving skills that have contributed materially to strengthening working relationships with counterparts. Job well done.”

We currently manage four USAID projects—ADP/E’s successor, the Incentives Driving Economic Alternatives for the North, East, and West cooperative agreement (IDEA-NEW); the Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development activity (ASMED); the Local Governance and Community Development program (LGCD); and the Afghanistan Stabilization Initiative (ASI). In these projects, our teams work hand-in-hand with Afghan counterparts on efforts that range from strengthening local governance in the most dangerous provinces to improving livelihoods and supporting enterprise development nationwide. All told, these programs employ some 1,100 people, of whom more than 1,000 are local, host-country nationals. We have established a permanent DAI office in Kabul to provide back-office and technical support to these projects.

On the basis of this extensive experience in Afghanistan and in the development arena generally, we are delighted to bring our perspective to this roundtable discussion. The work of the civilian development community in Afghanistan is difficult and dangerous. The deaths of five DAI project staff in a bombing in Gardez brought that home to all of us in December. But our commitment to this mission remains firm, because the work to be done is so important, for Americans and Afghans alike. I come here today not to claim unqualified success in Afghanistan, nor to suggest a single or simple path to its development—far from it. But I hope our participation in today’s roundtable can advance the discussion about what is working in Afghanistan and what it will take to succeed in our ultimate mission there.

I thank you once again for the chance to address this distinguished panel.

DAI Hosts Study Group from National Defense University

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

An Agribusiness Industry Study Group from the National Defense University last week visited DAI headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, to receive training in agribusiness, economic development, and working in post-conflict countries.

DAI presenters included Christopher Seeley on DAI’s projects in Haiti, including the ongoing earthquake relief effort; John McElwaine on DAI’s Afghanistan Small & Medium-Sized Enterprise Development Activity; Ioana Bouvier on geographic information systems (GIS); and William Grant and David Neven, who described DAI agribusiness projects in Burundi and Serbia, respectively. Betsy Marcotte, DAI’s Senior Vice President for Operations, gave opening remarks.

Approximately 20 attendees—military personnel and government civilians—participated in lively question and answer sessions, asking about topics including industries in Afghanistan that are considered sustainable; the differences in economic competitiveness and enabling environments between Afghanistan and Pakistan; and GIS’ role in coordinating development activities.

The event was organized by DAI’s Christopher Reynolds, who gave the attendees an overview on DAI, as well as on the development consulting industry, including its major firms, how the industry has grown, and how it operates with the U.S. Government. In particular, he and the presenters provided an understanding of global food needs, the use of foreign assistance to meet those needs, and the role of development firms in delivering the technical assistance required for agriculture development projects.

This marked the third time in three years that a study group from the National Defense University received training at DAI.

DAI Statement on USAID's Inspector General Report on FATA Capacity Building Project

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

DAI is proud of the work its team has done to implement USAID’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas Capacity Building Project (FATA CBP) in Pakistan, in one of the most challenging security and political environments in the world. While the Inspector General’s report is accurate that it took 10 months for this project to manage through these security and political challenges and hit full stride, the report contains significant gaps and fails to fully and fairly assess the progress of the program. DAI stands by USAID’s vigorous response to the audit, which is included as an appendix to the published report.

Among the shortcomings in the IG report are these:

The report covers only two of the five objectives for the project, despite clear testimony from USAID that FATA CBP excelled in implementing additional, more pressing components, such as economic growth and civil-military coordination —components that have achieved "considerable results." Thus, the report provides a misleading and unduly negative account of the true progress made by the project.

The report mentions but fails to account fully for the significance of a four-month unexplained delay in replenishment funding. This disruption caused all FATA CBP activities to grind to a halt, engendered huge distrust and skepticism on the part of our government and nongovernment partners (including our own Pakistani team members), and set the program back by almost a full year. The disruption was completely outside the control of both DAI and USAID.

The report does not take adequate account of the security situation in FATA and the security requirements necessary to meet an accelerated pace of project activities. The most notable incident was the assassination of a project manager for another USAID implementing partner in Peshawar; after this tragic event, DAI was required to move its operation to Islamabad, causing still more delays.

About DAI

DAI works at the cutting edge of international development, combining technical excellence, professional project management, and exceptional customer service to solve our clients’ most complex problems. Since 1970, DAI has worked in 150 developing and transition countries, providing comprehensive development solutions in areas including crisis mitigation and stability operations, democratic governance and public sector management, agriculture and agribusiness, private sector development and financial services, economics and trade, HIV/AIDS, avian influenza control, water and natural resources management, and energy and climate change. Clients include international development agencies, international lending institutions, private corporations and philanthropies, and host-country governments.

Food Security Project for HIV-Affected Ethiopians Among Innovation Competition Finalists

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

The USAID Urban Gardens Program for HIV-Affected Women and Children, which has assisted more than 5,000 households and 15,000 orphans and vulnerable children in Ethiopia, was named a finalist in a competition sponsored by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and Ashoka’s Changemakers.com.

Urban Gardens, funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development by the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and implemented by DAI, is one of 13 finalists selected from 247 entrants to the contest, “Improved Nutrition: Solutions through Innovation.” Finalists were chosen by a panel of six global nutrition experts assembled by the Geneva, Switzerland-based GAIN and Washington, D.C.-based Ashoka. Three winners will be chosen by online voting that is ongoing through February 8.

The finalists, representing projects from 12 countries, were cited for providing solutions with the best potential to scale-up and achieve major impact on communities that lack access to food with vital nutrients or are unaware of the benefits of good nutrition.

The Addis Ababa-based Urban Gardens since September 2008 has established gardens throughout six Ethiopian cities. The neighborhood and school-based gardens use irrigation drip-kits that conserve water and make the gardens easier to tend for AIDS sufferers too weak to perform hard labor, and for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) who need to spend their days in school. The beneficiaries grow vegetables to sell and to consume, improving their nutrition through the consumption of the vegetables and the ability to purchase other foods. The project also provides technical assistance on the raising of vegetables and fruits and bringing the produce to market. In its first three years, the program intends to reach a total of 24,000 new households and 84,000 women and OVCs.

The three winners will each receive US$5,000 and be prominently featured on the Changemakers.com online social change community. Five entrants will also be sponsored to attend the GAIN Business Alliance Global Forum in Dubai in May 2010, where they will have the opportunity to present their projects to potential investors.

Vietnam Business, Government Leaders Applaud Launch of Latest Competitiveness Index

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

More than 500 business and government leaders gathered January 14, 2010, in Hanoi for the launch of the 2009 Provincial Competiveness Index (PCI), which points to the need for improved transparency and labor quality in Vietnam’s provinces to spur investment and growth.

The ceremony was chaired by Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Chairman Dr. Vu Tien Loc and U.S. Ambassador Michael Michalak. “PCI 2009 highlights the importance of economic governance in improving the business environment, and is a key measure of provinces’ ability to a-ttract investment, create jobs, and support economic growth,” Ambassador Michalak said, adding, “With the global economic downturn, improved governance has become even more critical for raising business confidence.”

PCI 2009 reflects the responses by 9,890 Vietnamese enterprises to a survey on provincial governance. It provides a rigorous analysis of economic governance and the regulatory environment in each of the country’s 58 provinces and five centrally managed cities, and sheds light on why some provinces show stronger private sector growth and dynamism relative to their neighbors.

The annual index, now in its fifth year, was developed by VCCI and the U.S. Agency for International Development under USAID’s Vietnam Competitiveness Initiative project, which is implemented by DAI.

"Thanks to the efforts of our Vietnamese counterparts, VCCI, provincial leaders, and businesses, the Provincial Competitiveness Index is now widely recognized as a useful tool for improved governance," Ambassador Michalak said.

USAID/Vietnam Representative, Francis A. Donovan, said that PCI 2009 is particularly significant because it incorporates the responses of more Vietnamese firms than ever before. "We are pleased to support VCCI's efforts to increase the awareness and application of the PCI throughout Vietnam," Mr. Donovan added.

Among its findings, PCI 2009 survey results indicate the need for greater transparency by provinces in sharing budget and land-use planning information, infrastructure development plans, and other documents that are important to help businesses inform their investment decision-making in Vietnam, one of the fastest-growing and most rapidly reforming countries in the world.

“The PCI represents the voice of the private sector and serves as a tool to support key reform initiatives such as the Prime Minister’s Project 30 [to cut administrative red tape] and decentralization,” Dr. Vu said in remarks to the audience. “I believe the PCI continues to be very important to support provincial leaders in their reform efforts, and assist central government leaders in making Vietnam a more competitive place for business.”

The event attracted media from throughout the country, generating more than 100 stories online in addition to wide coverage in print, TV, and radio.

Corporate partners for the event—including the American and European Chambers of Commerce, Microsoft, Intel, and FedEx—emphasized the importance of the PCI and of improving economic governance to the foreign and domestic business communities.

Da Nang province topped PCI 2009’s overall ranking, followed closely by Binh Duong. Lao Cai, Dong Thap, Vinh Long, and Vinh Phuc were also ranked among the top six. PCI 2009 also highlighted the top three reformers since 2006 -- Dien Bien, Ca Mau, and Long An -- noting their significant improvements in governance over the past four years. Government and business leaders presented awards to provincial leaders of the nine provinces.

Notably, PCI 2009 reported that the top provinces performed well in preparing workers to meet the increasing demand of foreign and domestic businesses for more highly skilled workers, and should be recognized for their accomplishments.

Overall, PCI 2009 survey results show that Vietnam continues to make progress in administrative reform. Businesses report that there have been improvements in the reduction of time costs for bureaucratic procedures and business startup or entry costs, which may be associated with the Prime Minister’s Administrative Simplification program, Project 30. Other notable areas of improvement identified include land access and legal institutions. Declines, however, were recorded in transparency, informal charges, and the proactivity of local leaders.

DAI Saddened By Haiti Earthquake; All Staff Accounted For

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

Updated, January 15. DAI is deeply saddened by this week's devastating earthquake and the terrible loss of life in Haiti.

Having worked in Haiti for more than 30 years, we have many friends and collaborators on the ground, in addition to three expatriate and 47 local employees on our current project, Haiti DEED (Economic Development for a Sustainable Environment). Our thoughts and prayers are with them and all the people of Haiti.

Given the catastrophic damage to Haiti’s power and communications infrastructure, we have had problems getting in touch with all of our people. But we can report that all DAI project staff are safe. One of those individuals is Haiti DEED’s Chief of Party, Mike Godfrey, who gave CNN this firsthand account of the earthquake and its aftermath from Port-au-Prince ("Entire building shook").

We extend our heartfelt sympathies to the victims of this disaster and stand ready to assist in the relief and recovery effort in due course.

Transparency Requested for Bangladesh Climate Change Initiatives

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

Bangladeshis are well aware that their country is vulnerable to extreme weather. Cyclones, monsoons, and heat waves in recent years have caused flooding, damage to drainage systems and drinking and farm water, and increased occurrence of disease.

Climate change is expected to exacerbate such risks for the densely populated, impoverished country. The Global Climate Risk Index, compiled by the German public policy organization Germanwatch, ranked Bangladesh at the top of its list of countries most vulnerable to climate change.

The Government of Bangladesh has allocated US$140 million over the past two years for a Climate Change Fund (CCF) to pay for projects and research toward mitigating climate change. To date, however, these funds have gone untouched.

At a workshop on December 30 in Dhaka, participants from civil society organizations and research institutes discussed their roles in monitoring the government’s budget to mitigate global climate change. "Global Climate Change and the National Budget: Lessons for Budget Analysis" was organized by Promoting Governance, Accountability, Transparency, and Integrity (PROGATI), a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project led by DAI that seeks to improve government oversight and expand ways for Bangladeshis to promote good governance.

In an initial presentation, workshop participants learned of key domestic and international funds, including the CCF, to finance global climate change initiatives. But concern over underutilization of funds and corruption has impeded access to the donor resources necessary to combat climate change. Policy advocates and representatives of coastal and other vulnerable communities at the workshop pushed for action, including transparency and accountability on how Bangladesh’s climate change mitigation funds are spent. Recommendations for tracking government expenditures and promoting accountability included:

Tracking expenditures through the remainder of fiscal year 2010 to ensure funds are being spent;

Identifying which ministries are establishing climate change units (the government has made funding available to all ministries);

Building ties with civil society organizations to monitor projects to promote accountability and transparency; and

Preparing to analyze the fiscal year 2011 budget for allocations related to climate change.

“The workshop addressed how the government will fund climate change initiatives, where the spending will take place, and how those outside the government can effectively monitor implementation of climate change policy,” said Jeremy Kanthor, a DAI democracy and governance specialist and PROGATI’s Deputy Chief of Party.

“The more people understand how and where money will be spent, the more accountable—and, we hope, effective—the government's climate change efforts will be. Ultimately, our goal is that this information will be fed to Parliament to help them oversee public expenditure on climate change.”

ECIAfrica Organizing Business Council to Promote Black South African Suppliers

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

ECIAfrica, a partly owned subsidiary of DAI, is playing a key role in establishing the South African Supplier Diversity Council (SASDC), which will link black-owned small enterprises in South Africa to larger corporations and their supply chains.

The SASDC will integrate the country’s pool of previously under-used and marginalized black suppliers, using targeted procurement and enterprise development strategies to join them in sustainable ways with potential buyers in South Africa and abroad.

The SASDC start-up will be championed and managed by the National Business Initiative, in partnership with the U.S. National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), with initial support from the ECIAfrica-led South African International Business Linkages (SAIBL) program, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development. The SASDC will draw its membership from corporations based or operating in South Africa, and be funded by member subscriptions and services fees.

“We are confident the SASDC will create and nurture outstanding and profitable business relationships for both entrepreneurs and their corporate customers,” said John James, SAIBL’s Chief of Party. “South Africa already has a sound business infrastructure and enabling environment. This council will speed up the participation of black entrepreneurs in the mainstream economy.”

The SASDC will be modeled after the NMSDC, a New York City-based U.S. corporate membership organization with nearly 40 years of experience in promoting and facilitating supplier diversity. The NMSDC has helped establish similar organizations—in Canada, the United Kingdom, China, and Australia—that link historically excluded populations with corporate purchasers to create mutually beneficial economic partnerships.

“Economic empowerment is one of the great equalizers,” said NMSDC President Harriet R. Michel. “I hope the SASDC will enhance economic integration and stability through black business development.”

National Business Initiative CEO Andre Fourie said the launch of the SASDC reinforces his organization’s commitment to equitably promote South Africa’s economy and job creation opportunities.

“South African corporations are exploring meaningful ways to support transformation that will enhance their competitiveness and sustainability, and underpin the stability of this young democracy,” Fourie said. “We need to deal with the ongoing economic consequences of the apartheid era, while ensuring that we become globally competitive.”

DAI Opens Center of Development Excellence to Assist Pakistani Aid Practitioners

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

DAI is delighted to announce the launch of the Center for Development Excellence (CDE), a DAI-funded initiative to coach development practitioners in Pakistan and build the capacity of local firms and nongovernmental organizations to execute larger projects. Managed by DAI Pakistan out of its Islamabad office, and led by DAI’s Mehreen Tanvir, the CDE will offer its first training in February 2010.

Numerous local Pakistani aid organizations are committed to tackling Pakistan’s development problems, but many lack the expertise and organizational frameworks to bid on, win, and implement larger donor-funded assistance projects. This limitation is proving acute as the international community tries to provide funding and programming assistance to this strategically important country. The United States alone, for example, has pledged $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over the next five years. Other public and private donors also wish to partner with responsible Pakistani aid groups.

The CDE’s mission is to transfer the knowledge DAI has acquired over 40 years of implementing donor-funded projects worldwide, in technical areas such as agriculture and food security, economic growth, and good governance. DAI’s work history includes more than 25 years in Pakistan, encompassing some 30 projects for clients such as the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID).

“We know from experience that the best and most enduring solutions to development challenges are those designed and implemented locally, and ultimately owned by local people and institutions,” said James Boomgard, DAI’s President and CEO. “We created the Center for Development Excellence to help local organizations meet the demands that will come with the increasing assistance being offered to Pakistan, and with it the increased need for demonstrable project excellence and financial accountability.”

The CDE offers support in financial, contractual, and programmatic compliance, personnel resource management, logistics, training, and administrative management. It is designed to promote collaboration between local Pakistani aid organizations so they can share best practices and work together more effectively, with a special focus on engaging Pakistan’s women and girls.

Mehreen Tanvir, a native of Lahore, will lead the CDE. Ms. Tanvir most recently worked as a consultant for the World Bank on the Afghanistan Emergency Customs Modernization and Trade Facilitation project. She has worked closely with the Afghan Ministries of Finance and Commerce to strengthen infrastructure, human resource policy, and institutional frameworks to improve trade logistics and enhance customs revenues in the country.

Previously, Ms.Tanvir assisted the Iraqi Women’s Fellowship Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based NGO, in raising funds and developing a marketing and outreach strategy. A graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government with a master’s degree in public administration in international development, she has also taught development economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

“Recent international and local events have put increasing demands on local capacity,” Ms. Tanvir said. “We recognize the importance of meeting these local practitioners’ needs in fulfilling Pakistan’s development objectives.”

The CDE’s training modules will include planning and managing for quality and impact in development projects; competing for international donor contracts and grants; planning, executing, and reporting on projects; ensuring contract compliance and financial management; managing risks through financial controls and audits; and establishing codes of ethics.

The CDE will partner with other local and international training institutes to create a capacity-building plan that covers regulations, policies, and compliance requirements for USAID, DFID, and other donor agencies. Development practitioners with experience managing and implementing projects in the region will teach the courses and offer topical, relevant seminars.

If the CDE proves successful, DAI will explore replicating the model in other countries as part of a broader effort to build local capacity around the world.

Updated Statement from DAI President and CEO Dr. James Boomgard Regarding Detainee in Cuba

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

The DAI subcontractor detained in Cuba has now been in custody for more than a month. From the outset, our overriding concern has been the speedy release of the individual and his safe return to his family. This remains the case. We have been circumspect in our public statements, while working with the State Department and the family to resolve the situation.

Because recent allegations about the detained individual and the program for which he was working threaten to prolong his detention, we would like to correct certain misstatements that have appeared in the media.

The detained DAI subcontractor was not working for any intelligence service. As noted in our original statement of December 14, the detained individual—a committed development professional with many years of experience providing humanitarian and development assistance worldwide—was working as a subcontractor to DAI on a U.S. Agency for International Development program aimed at providing humanitarian assistance to the people of Cuba.

Specifically, he was working with a peaceful, non-dissident civic group—a religious and cultural group recognized by the Cuban government—to improve its ability to communicate with its members across the island and overseas. His activities included the distribution of basic IT equipment such as cell phones and laptops designed to facilitate this communication.

DAI was chosen to implement this program through an open bidding process. The program is working with Cuban civil society—civic, cultural, and community-based groups—to enhance their ability to improve the lives of Cubans and their communities.

Dr. James Boomgard

President and CEO

About DAI

DAI is a mission-driven economic and social development firm with a proud record of development successes going back 40 years. Since 1970, DAI has worked in 150 developing and transition countries, providing comprehensive development solutions in areas including HIV/AIDS and avian influenza control, crisis mitigation, agriculture and agribusiness, democratic governance and public sector management, private sector development and financial services, economics and trade, water and natural resources management, and energy and climate change.

Article in Avian Diseases Journal Describes STOP AI Training Principles

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

An article written by DAI staff and consultants on training vulnerable populations to respond to avian influenza outbreaks has been accepted for publication in the scientific journal Avian Diseases.

"Practical High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza First Response Training Exercises”— authored by Andrea M. Miles, Harm Kiezebrink , Gary R. Mullins , Jules Sparrey, Meredith MacDonald, and Ed Salt—describes various aspects of DAI’s Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) project, a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded initiative that has four basic principles: protect humans first, protect animals, contain the virus, and isolate the outbreak.

STOP AI’s training approach differs from traditional capacity building, the article explains, in that it uses experiential techniques and exercises to ground theory, while providing participants with opportunities to practice what they have learned in a safe environment. The project has used these practical, hands-on applications to prepare vulnerable populations around the globe in avian influenza response.

For information on purchasing the article or subscribing to Avian Diseases, the official journal of the Association of American Avian Pathologists, click here.

In other news, Dr. Mullins recently lectured on “The Socio-Economic Impacts of Eradicating Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia from Botswana” at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Massachusetts.

Because many of Botswana’s rural households depend on livestock for income and sustenance, Dr. Mullins observed, measures to contain and eradicate the bovine pleuropneumonia — which included mass culling in the 1990s—have likely permanently altered the rural economy. Subsequent relief efforts to restore sustainable livelihoods for these households have had mixed success, Dr. Mullins noted.

DAI Mourns Project Personnel Killed in Afghanistan

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI is deeply saddened to report the deaths of five staff associated with our projects in Afghanistan. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families, and the many development professionals touched by this tragedy.

Our first priority at this time is the safety and security of our Afghanistan staff, both expatriate and Afghan national, whose courage and dedication to the cause of Afghanistan’s development remain a source of inspiration, even at this most difficult of times.

On December 15, five employees of DAI’s security subcontractor were killed by an explosion in the Gardez office of the Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) Program, a USAID project implemented by DAI. A second, apparently unconnected incident involved a car bomb near DAI offices in Kabul. The blast shattered windows but caused no severe injuries. DAI was not directly targeted, and all DAI employees are safe.

DAI is collaborating with our client and partner, the U.S. Agency for International Development, to ensure project continuity. The company is committed to doing everything it can to support the victims’ families and help our Afghanistan-based staff through this traumatic experience. All media inquiries should be directed to DAI’s Director of Communications, Steven O’Connor (301.771.7834, steven_o’connor@dai.com).

Statement from DAI President and CEO Jim Boomgard Regarding Detention of Subcontractor in Cuba

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

The New York Times and other media outlets have reported the detention of a U.S. citizen in Cuba linked to DAI.

DAI is a professional economic development organization that has for 40 years been working to bring development benefits to millions of disadvantaged people in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Our prime concern is for the safety, well-being, and quick return to the United States of the detained individual. We have been working closely with the State Department to ensure that the detainee's safety and well-being is given top priority. Given the delicacy of this situation, we ask for media discretion. All inquires should be directed to the State Department.

In 2008, DAI competed for and was awarded a contract, the Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program, to help the U.S. Government implement activities in support of the rule of law and human rights, political competition, and consensus building, and to strengthen civil society in support of just and democratic governance in Cuba ( www.usaid.gov/locations/latin_america_caribbean/country/cuba/ ).

The new program was also designed to help the U.S. Government address challenges raised about some aspects of its program in the past ( November 2006 GAO report on US Democracy Assistance for Cuba -- www.gao.gov/new.items/d07147.pdf ). DAI was engaged on the basis of its positive track record in development, and its capacity to provide sound management and administration of key aspects of U.S. Government programs such as this one, which involves support for the peaceful activities of a broad range of nonviolent organizations through competitively awarded grants and subcontracts.

The detained individual was an employee of a program subcontractor, which was implementing a competitively issued subcontract to assist Cuban civil society organizations.

Dr. James Boomgard
President and CEO

Teenagers from Ethiopia, Detroit Compare Urban Gardens Via Teleconference

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

As the young mothers and pregnant teens gathered around a big screen in Detroit, Michigan, another group sat 7,300 miles away in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, waiting for the same videoconference to start.

G. Asenath Andrews, Principal of Detroit’s Ferguson Academy for Young Women, described how when the videoconference began, her students saw teenagers just like themselves on the screen. “We were transported across the world. It was extraordinary; great for the kids on both continents.”

An exciting and unusual bond connected the two groups: urban gardening. The students from Detroit grow vegetables and raise animals on a two-acre farm next to their inner-city school; when not tending their crops, the youth in Ethiopia, participants in the Urban Gardens Program for HIV-Affected Women and Children, go to school, care for their families, or simply rest from the effects of HIV/AIDS.

The digital dialogue was a highlight of “Beyond Urban Gardens: Meeting the Growing Needs of Ethiopia’s Urban Population,” a November 16–17 conference in Addis Ababa that drew more than 300 urban gardeners and government and nongovernmental officials. The Urban Gardens Program, a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project implemented by DAI, hosted the event, at which urban agriculture—inner-city and suburban farming designed to improve food security, livelihoods, health, and urban greening—emerged as a priority for African cities and others coping with urban overcrowding.

The 90-minute teleconference was organized and hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, which worked with The Greening of Detroit, an organization founded in 1989 to reforest Detroit’s neighborhoods, to identify Ferguson Academy as a dialogue partner for the Ethiopian gardeners.

Despite their common bonds, the participating Americans and Ethiopians discovered stark differences. At Detroit’s Ferguson Academy, where some vegetable beds are elevated for the convenience of expecting moms, and where classrooms and childcare are co-located, there is ample water for growing crops, and food is grown as a supplement to meals and for resale; the Ethiopians, who endure severe water shortages, grow food they depend on for sustenance, selling what they can if they have extra.

“The context in both situations was so out of the imagination of any of the kids on either side,” said Nancy Russell, the Urban Gardens Program Chief of Party and a longtime director of community reproductive health programs. “The Detroit girls asked if there were fast food restaurants in Ethiopia. They were surprised there were none, and that these kids did not really even know about restaurants.

“The Detroit girls asked our kids what they wanted to do when they finished school, and then ours asked the same questions. The kids on both sides had lots of dreams for the future.”

The young people discussed crops, growing seasons, water issues, and HIV/AIDS, among other topics, and hoped for further contact, though the Ethiopian students made clear their access to the internet is very limited.

After the videoconference, Andrews and her students in Detroit continued to talk about their conversation with the Ethiopian group, even brainstorming on ways to tackle the water issues facing Ethiopia’s urban gardeners. “We talked about what our mission would be if we went [to Ethiopia], and what the criteria would be for the girls to go,” Andrews said. “It made me remember why I love teaching, basking in their excitement and their discoveries. It was wonderful—one of those stellar days.”

The Addis Ababa-based Urban Gardens Program since September 2008 has enlisted more than 5,000 households and 15,000 orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) in six cities into the program. The neighborhood and school-based gardens use irrigation drip-kits that conserve water and make the gardens easier to tend for AIDS sufferers too weak to perform hard labor, and for OVCs who need to spend their days in school. In its first three years, the program intends to reach a total of 24,000 new households and 84,000 women and OVCs.

Ferguson Academy, which has operated an urban garden for 24 years, serves pregnant teens and young mothers from difficult situations who aspire to a high school diploma, college, and better lives for themselves and their children. Teens who struggle or drop out at Detroit’s traditional city schools are buoyed by Ferguson’s focus on mother and child, its parenting and family classes that supplement traditional coursework, and a support network that includes volunteer babysitters from local community groups.

DAIs Schmidt Presents Natural Resource Management KM Site

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

One often hears about knowledge management for development, but a new way to see knowledge management is as development, on par with other technical areas, according to DAI’s Sarah Schmidt.

“At its core, international development is about transferring skills, knowledge, and technology, so knowledge management [KM] and development are a natural fit,” Schmidt said during a presentation at KMWorld 2009, the KM discipline’s premier conference, held this month in San Jose, California. “Effective knowledge management provides the toolkit to apply this transfer of skills, knowledge, and technology, but at a larger scale with a smaller budget.”

Schmidt, the participation and outreach manager for Capitalizing Knowledge -- Connecting Communities (CK2C), a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded KM project, introduced the KMWorld audience to www.FRAMEweb.org, an online network of nearly 2,000 natural resource management (NRM) peers and practitioners.

About three-fourths of FRAMEweb’s members are working in developing countries, and many have contributed online articles to discussions that probe dozens of NRM subjects, such as fisheries, land tenure, and drought.

“For example, participants will ask their online peers, ‘What were some of the lever or trigger points that made this practice or activity successful, and what policies and cultural practices were key?’” Schmidt said. “Sharing this type of information with the wider community and policy makers can really take these best practices to scale.”

Schmidt’s panel, titled “Social Learning Strategies: Best Practices from the Government and Military,” also featured Eric Sauve, the CEO and cofounder of Tomoye, an Gatineau, Quebec-based provider of community collaboration software and services, and Patricia Eng, senior KM advisor for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Schmidt pointed to FRAMEweb’s Sustainable Land Management in Africa community, started online in 2006 to identify technologies that have succeeded in Niger and Sahelian Africa. These included “farmer-managed natural regeneration,” a type of agroforestry adapted by farmers to increase productivity while reducing risks associated with drought and desertification.

At an October 2009 event sponsored by Oxfam America and held in Washington, D.C., FRAMEweb shared stories from the Sustainable Land Management in Africa community through a live “Tweetinar,” enabling participants in the original web-based discussions to follow the face-to-face proceedings through their mobile devices or via FRAMEweb news feeds.

“This community has really come full circle in our KM cycle,” Schmidt said. “And they are continuing on this path through application and new research.”

DAIs Doyle to Moderate Panel on Climate Change Regulations and Development Funding

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

Will climate change regulations bring a large increase in government development assistance and private sector funding to developing countries?

This question is set for debate from 12:30 until 2 p.m. Wednesday, November 18, by a panel moderated by DAI’s Patrick Doyle at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Doyle, DAI’s technical area manager for Energy and Climate Change, will lead a discussion on the potential capital flow increases to developing countries under proposed U.S. legislation, as well as under a post-Kyoto international agreement. Panelists will discuss the size, type, and timing of the prospective increases in financing for developing countries’ climate change adaptation and mitigation activities via the carbon markets, multilateral finance, and U.S. and other governments’ direct development assistance.

“In order for developing countries to adapt to climate change and mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions, hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed annually, above and beyond existing development assistance,” Doyle said. “The expert panelists will discuss the potential for increasing private investment flows and public development assistance to developing countries.”

“Private capital flows are highly dependent on the structure of domestic and international greenhouse gas regulations now under consideration,” he added. “In addition, governments may generate revenues from the carbon markets or use other financial means to provide official development assistance and drive technology transfer.”

The panel features Dirk Forrister, managing director of Natsource LLC; Jeffrey Hopkins, advisor for economic and environmental policy at Rio Tinto; Craig O’Connor, director of the Office of Renewable Energy and Environmental Exports at the Export-Import Bank; and Aiichiro Yamamoto, chief representative for the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s U.S. office.

The panel is sponsored by the Society for International Development, Washington, D.C., chapter. For more information on how to attend the event, click here.

Urban Gardens Face Lack of Water and Land, DAIs Russell Tells APHA

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

For HIV/AIDS-affected Ethiopians who tend urban gardens, the vegetables they grow provide health-sustaining nutrition and improved livelihoods and income. But serious impediments must be overcome for the inner-city irrigation and education efforts to proliferate.

“Even though urban gardens have given tremendous boosts to thousands of people, it is still a new program and needs to address certain challenges,” said DAI’s Nancy Russell, Chief of Party of the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Urban Gardens Program for HIV-Affected Women and Children.

“A lack of available, quality land in Ethiopian cities is limiting the number and size of gardens; and municipal water for the gardens is only a temporary solution because that water is needed for drinking,” Russell said. “Additional and continuous sources of fresh water are needed.”

Russell, addressing conferees on November 9 at the American Public Health Association 137th Annual Meeting and Exposition in Philadelphia, also noted that urban gardeners and their sponsors are working to ascertain which crops provide optimum yields and income under specific scenarios, and further developing irrigation methods to be more sustainable.

The Addis Ababa-based Urban Gardens Program, which employs 20 local nationals, since September 2008 has enlisted more than 5,000 households and 15,000 orphans and vulnerable children in six cities to participate in the program. The neighborhood and school-based gardens use water-saving irrigation drip-kits that conserve water and make the gardens easier to tend for AIDS sufferers too weak to perform hard labor and for orphaned children who need to go to school.

Russell presented on urban gardens during a session on HIV/AIDS that included panelists Constance Newman of IntraHealth International, Dominick Shattuck of Family Health International, Rosy Chhabra of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, and Paula Tavrow of UCLA. Helene Carabin of the University of Oklahoma moderated.

Russell is advocating the formation of an Urban Agriculture Forum to bring together those addressing urban overcrowding in Africa and elsewhere. On November 16-18, the Urban Gardens Program is hosting an annual conference in Addis Ababa, where stakeholders and other invitees will share best practices and ideas.

“Urban agriculture enhances much-needed food security and nutrition and health,” Russell said. “It also recycles solid and liquid waste for compost, provides a social safety net for poor people, and contributes to urban greening.”

In Ethiopia, she added, the Urban Gardens Program helps those stigmatized by HIV/AIDS – women who have contracted the virus, and children orphaned by it – by making them contributors to their neighborhoods. Russell told conferees the stories of Solomon, Tsion, and Birke – an unemployed man, an HIV-positive single mother, and a 14-year-old orphan, respectively – all of whom used their gardens to lift themselves up in their communities.

In addition to gardening, the project teaches nutrition to its beneficiaries, and links them to other health and HIV services such as treatment and voluntary counseling and testing. Beginning in 2010, the program will also promote the formation of community savings and loans, in which members will be able to save for future garden inputs as well as for other household needs.

Roughly 4.5 million people in Ethiopia lack the food to meet basic nutritional needs, which has led to chronic malnutrition and immune-suppression, leaving them more susceptible to basic illnesses, the HIV virus, and opportunistic infections, as well as the debilitating effects of antiretroviral medication. Households as a result are stressed economically by caring for people living with HIV/AIDS, and 5 million orphans and vulnerable children have seen the weakening of their already strained safety net.

The Urban Gardens Program, Russell said, has been able to make a small but tangible dent in the problem.

“The USAID Urban Gardens Program was able to get critical buy-in at the local level from mayors, who granted communal lands to the project,” Russell said. “The availability of this land not only allowed for the use of technology and the growing of food in very limited spaces; it has empowered women gardeners who are the least likely people to use the land.”

DAIs Boomgard Calls for a More Authoritative, Better Publicized USAID

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

Critics for years have targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), claiming the world’s leading provider of nonmilitary foreign aid has faltered in its ability to design, direct, and facilitate its work.

Projects are sapped by bureaucracy at every step, argued Tom Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at a recent panel in Washington, D.C., where he introduced his report, “Revitalizing U.S. Democracy Assistance: The Challenge of USAID.”

“Bureaucratization damages all of USAID’s work,” said Carothers, who also criticized what he sees as a lack of host-country ownership and a lack of emphasis on democracy and governance issues on the agency’s part.

“We have an administration committed to a comprehensive review of development policy,” said Carothers, Carnegie’s vice president of studies. “We have important members of Congress interested in reform of assistance. I believe that it’s the time now to seize this moment and … put forward specific ideas onto the table.”

Sharing the panel, James Boomgard, DAI’s president and CEO, put forward three recommendations: fix USAID’s procurement process to improve project design and management, hire more technical experts so the agency can better collaborate on and oversee the work it contracts, and designate USAID as the unquestioned lead agency of the U.S. assistance portfolio, thus quelling turf wars.

While agreeing with many of Carothers’ criticisms, Boomgard countered that USAID is also getting an unjustifiably bad rap. The agency must find ways to publicize its successes more powerfully, he said, and explain how its efforts bring about improvements in people’s lives throughout the world.

“There are thousands of successful AID projects out there that nobody knows about, and that USAID does not have the capacity or the vocabulary to communicate,” Boomgard said.

“There [are] staff, particularly Foreign Service nationals, who have been developed over the years who form the civil service of USAID, who really do understand development and how to do it. And because their word is not getting out, their voice is not being heard, and [as a result] we don’t hear the whole story about AID.”

Boomgard cited the Vietnam Support for Trade Acceleration (STAR I and II) programs, in which USAID-funded experts are helping the government of Vietnam revise its commercial law and codes so the country can participate in bilateral and global trade.

“The impact of which reinforced a whole series of reforms that … have been extraordinarily desirable and extraordinarily beneficial to the opening up of the Vietnamese economy, and to their success in pursuing whatever political and economic visions that they have,” Boomgard said. “[But] how do you measure that? It doesn’t come down to concrete things that you can write about easily.”

Carothers and Boomgard were joined on the panel by Dorothy Taft, director of USAID’s Office of Democracy and Governance, and Lorne Craner, president of the International Republican Institute. David Abramowitz, chief counsel for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, moderated. Several hundred audience members heard the deliberations unfold.

Boomgard said that as things stand, USAID runs the risk of having its “retail-level” success stories be the only ones that capture the media’s attention. While the openings of schools and staffing of clinics are laudable, he said, they comprise only one part of a broader portfolio of USAID projects that are making lasting differences at both macro and micro levels.

Responding to a question on the need for security -- in lieu of democratic institutions -- in providing aid, he pointed to the USAID-funded Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) project in Afghanistan. LGCD’s preparatory work and subsequent micro-projects were essential to a much publicized success in the village of Nawa, in Helmand province, where nervous local leaders and a newly arrived U.S. Marine Corps battalion were able to embark together on community projects in what had been a Taliban stronghold, once the Marines had established security.

Boomgard noted that an ensuing story in the Washington Post lauded the Marines’ securing of Nawa, but made no mention of USAID’s contribution to the community’s development.

“Development activity was working to empower what was an existing and emerging set of local government players,” Boomgard said. “That allowed them, in fact, to be ready with more than a dozen ongoing projects to be started up immediately [on the Marines’ arrival], and gave credibility to the citizenry there that [their] government could, in fact, deliver if it was provided that secure environment.”

“Now, this is a new example [of security and development cooperation]. It’s a very interesting example. I don’t know who is going to tell the whole story.”

A video and transcript from the Carnegie event can be found here.

DAIs Kevin Haggerty Selected by WBJ as Finalist for CFO of the Year

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

Kevin Haggerty, DAI’s chief financial officer, has been named a finalist for the Washington Business Journal’s CFO of the Year award, in the category for government contractors with annual revenues exceeding $200 million.

Finalists were selected from a pool of nominees by a panel that included an editorial team from the journal and past winners of the award. Mike LaRosa, a WBJ editor, said that judges were seeking nominees who stood out and had the best stories of successful financial management.

Haggerty is responsible for all finance and accounting functions at DAI, as well as its Office of Information Management and Technology.

Two other finalists were named alongside Haggerty in the large contractor category: Patrick “Rick” Attilio of Chantilly, Va.-based Apptis Inc., and Tom Weston of McLean, Va.-based QinetiQ North America Operations LLC.

Eighteen finalists representing six categories will be honored on Dec. 2 at the journal’s CFO of the Year Awards reception. Information on attending the event can be found here.

DAI Experts Featured at Civil-Military Forums Covering Afghanistan, Africa

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

Experts from DAI’s Stability Sector have recently been much in demand at professional gatherings to appraise civilian-military cooperation in Afghanistan and western and eastern Africa.

At the International Peace Operations Association Annual Summit, for example, held last week in Washington, D.C., Patrick O’Mahony discussed projects he is leading in Afghanistan, focusing on hard-earned development victories achieved in cooperation with the U.S. Marines in Helmand province.

O’Mahony, Chief of Party on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Local Governance and Community Development project, spoke as part of the “Succeeding in Afghanistan” panel, along with Ali Jalali, Afghanistan’s former interior minister; J. Alexander Thier of the United States Institute of Peace Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention; and Dr. Christopher Shoemaker, senior vice president of strategy for MPRI.

Willet Weeks, a principal development specialist and Special Advisor to USAID for Peace and Stabilization in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, was the featured speaker at the Nov. 5 Great Lakes Policy Forum event, “How to Promote Peace and Stabilization in the Eastern Congo: A View from Goma." He also recently lectured at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.

A team of DAI instructors from the Department of Defense-funded Trans-Sahara Security Symposium made presentations Oct. 30-31 at “West Africa and the U.S. 'War on Terror,'” a conference at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State University.

Dr. Pita Agbese presented "The U.S. War on Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Perception in West Africa;" Boubacar N'Diaye discussed "The Mauritanian Military and the U.S. War on Terror;" Brig. Gen. (ret.) Russell Howard spoke on “Global Terrorism and U.S. Security Policy Toward Africa;" and Zakaria Ousman discussed “The African Stability Architecture: A New Vision.” Finally, Andrea Walther and Dr. Julius N'yangoro jointly presented an evaluation of “West Africa and U.S. Security: Policy Instruments,” where they examined the past five years of the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership.

DAI-Led Team Selected to Implement USAID Response to Emerging Infectious Diseases

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI has been awarded a five-year program aimed at preventing future pandemics such as HIV/AIDS and H1N1.

The global infectious disease program, called RESPOND, funded at up to $185 million, is the largest of five U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) projects designed to improve local institutional capacity to respond to “zoonotic” diseases—those that originate in animals and develop the capacity to infect humans.

“Even a partial list of recent zoonotic diseases—SARS, West Nile Virus, Ebola, avian influenza, novel H1N1—reveals the urgency of our work at the intersection of human and animal health,” said Jerry Martin, Managing Director of DAI’s Health Sector. “We’re honored to implement this critically important program and excited to play a leadership role in responding to the next pandemic threat.”

DAI leads a distinguished RESPOND team including the University of Minnesota, Tufts University, Training Resources Group, Inc., and Ecology and Environment, Inc.

This multidisciplinary team will build the capacity of national institutions of animal and public health to address emerging zoonotic diseases in designated “hot spot” regions. The project will be based in Washington, D.C., with possible field work implemented in regional hub offices across the Congo Basin, Southeast Asia, the Amazon Basin, and the Gangetic Plain.

Combining animal and human health epidemiology and disease surveillance, RESPOND will employ an integrated approach that unites physicians, public health officials, veterinarians, and the private sector to combat emerging disease on a global scale. The program will focus on long-term field epidemiology training, short-term in-service training, and academic preparation for health professionals. The program will also seek to identify and counter outbreaks while they are still within animal populations, as well as strengthen the capacity to respond to outbreaks within human communities.

RESPOND will be led by DAI’s David Elkins, an epidemiologist and public health specialist with 25 years of field experience, including 20 years in Southeast Asia, the Gangetic Plain, and East Africa. Dr. Elkins has led numerous projects for international development organizations.

DAI is a recognized leader in the zoonotic disease arena. The firm currently manages two major USAID projects to control and prevent highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI): the worldwide Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) and the Indonesia Community-Based Avian Influenza Control (CBAIC) programs, which train animal and public health workers, mobilize communities for disease surveillance and reporting, support HPAI outbreak response, and facilitate private sector partnerships to limit virus transmission in domestic animal production systems.

DAIs David Neven Describes Impact of Kenyan Supermarkets on Smallholders, Labor

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST

Do the rural poor benefit from the market opportunities created by the rise of supermarkets in developing countries?

This is a critical question for economic development practitioners. DAI’s David Neven and fellow researchers have tried to address it by focusing on Kenya, where they found that small, rain-fed horticultural farms run by the rural poor are typically excluded from the supermarket channel because they lack the economies of scale and logistics capabilities to compete effectively in this market.

That said, a new group of medium-sized, fast-growing commercial farms managed by well-educated farmers is catering successfully to Kenya’s domestic supermarkets, and the rural poor are benefiting via the labor market because of these farms’ heavy reliance on hired workers.

These dynamics are detailed in a new article published in World Development titled “Kenyan Supermarkets, Emerging Middle-Class Horticultural Farmers, and Employment Impacts on the Rural Poor” (Volume 37, Issue 11). The article was written by DAI’s David Neven and co-authors Michael Makokha Odera of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Kenya; Thomas Reardon of Michigan State University; and Honglin Wang of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

While there has been considerable research on the rise of supermarkets in general, this article is one of the first to provide a survey-based study of how domestic supermarkets affect smallholders.

To purchase the article, click here.

Jim Boomgard Joins Panel Debating Revitalization of U.S. Democracy Assistance

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST

Revitalizing its international democracy assistance would significantly help the U.S. administration reinvent how it promotes democracy, according to Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Since the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest U.S. funder of democracy aid, the agency is a logical starting point for such an effort, Carothers contends, although USAID’s institutional complexities make strengthening its democracy programs a serious challenge.

Carothers, the vice president of studies at Carnegie, will discuss the findings of his forthcoming report, Revitalizing U.S. Democracy Assistance: The Challenge of USAID, on Oct. 29th during an event at Carnegie in Washington, D.C. Copies of the report will be available at the event.

Featured speakers in the panel discussion will be James Boomgard, president and CEO of DAI; Lorne Craner, president of the International Republican Institute; and James Michel, counselor to USAID. David Abramowitz, chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, will moderate the panel, which will debate how President Obama should rethink U.S. democracy promotion and improve democracy assistance.

To register for the event, contact Carnegie’s David Kampf.

Worldwide Tax-Collection Data Posted to Fiscal Reform II Website

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST

The 2008-2009 Collecting Taxes data system, featuring objective measures of revenue performance, tax structure, and tax administration across more than 180 countries, is now available from the Fiscal Reform and Economic Governance website or at www.collectingtaxes.net.

Designed as a tool to assist practitioners interested in improving economic governance, the interactive data system facilitates cross-country comparisons on tax-related indicators such as personal and corporate income tax rates, tax collections as a percentage of gross domestic product, tax administration staffing and costs, and other related data.

Fiscal Reform and Economic Governance (Fiscal Reform II) is a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project implemented by DAI to help USAID's Office of Economic Growth provide technical leadership and support to field missions in developing and transition countries.

The project trains USAID officers, prepares best practice notes, and develops analytical and programmatic tools to address tax policy and revenue administration, budgeting and expenditure control, decentralization and inter-governmental finance, fiscal oversight and audit, public procurement, civil service reform, and other issues related to improving government financial systems, e-government, and economic governance.

Pilot Use of Competitiveness Tool Described in Forthcoming Journal Article

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST

Even though Brazil is the world's third-largest producer and exporter of cashews, the country's burdensome tax and credit regulations still hinder the competitiveness of its cashew purveyors.

Those hindrances -- and ways to correct them -- were identified in 2008 when DAI evaluated Brazil's cashew value chain in the pilot use of its Competitiveness Impacts of Business Environment Reform (CIBER) tool.

The CIBER analysis is described in "Evaluating Competitiveness Impacts of Regulatory Reforms in the Brazilian Cashew Industry ," co-written by Hugo Santana de Figueiredo Junior and DAI's Bryanna Millis, soon to be published in a forthcoming issue of Development in Practice.

The analysis revealed that tax and credit regulations should be priorities to improve the competitiveness of Brazil's cashew business, while validating CIBER as an effective means of deepening industry analysis and informing competitiveness strategies.

Developed by Millis and DAI's Ulrich Ernst, CIBER identifies and prioritizes value chain-specific business environment constraints and involves the stakeholders in the assessment. This bottom-up approach measures quantitative and qualitative factors, and assesses the political and economic feasibility of reform options, contributing to a comprehensive competitiveness strategy.

The CIBER process also develops a stakeholder-driven advocacy strategy to promote feasible reform.

Social Innovators Explore Scale, Sustainability at Georgetown Seminar

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST

Since smaller actors are responsible for a disproportionate amount of social innovation, development organizations will benefit by collaborating with them as they try to solve development challenges. So concluded panelists last Thursday at a DAI-cosponsored seminar at Georgetown University.

"Social Entrepreneurship: Putting Powerful Ideas to Work," a seminar that attracted more than 300 people to the Lohrfink Auditorium at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business, was highlighted by presentations from three social innovators:

Kamal Mouzawak of Lebanon, a "culinary activist" whose motto is "make food, not war," created the organization Souk el Tayeb to celebrate food traditions that support small-scale farmers and producers in a context of sustainable agriculture.

Ezzet Naem Guindy of Egypt, from the trash collectors/recyclers community known as the zabaleen in the section of Cairo known as Garbage City, is pursuing recognition to leverage his community's expertise in waste management and build bridges to the formal sector.

Mohammed K.T. Zaid al-Kilany of Palestine, who is connecting young graduates with prospective employers via SMS messaging, in a labor market where most young people struggle to get information about local jobs.

In addressing economic opportunity, environmental degradation, climate change, hunger, and other issues in the Middle East, participants pondered how to turn good ideas into sustainable business models that create lasting change. An increasing number of smaller actors are now collaborating with governments and donors to amplify the impact of their ideas, participants agreed.

Featured speakers included Sonal Shah, director of the White House Office of Social Innovation; Ehaab Abdou, advisor for the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Brookings Institution; George Khalaf, director of the Arab World Social Innovators Program at the Synergos Institute; and Ann Aarnes of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), senior deputy assistant administrator of the Middle East Bureau. DAI CEO James Boomgard delivered the closing remarks.

The event was organized by the USAID's Global Development Alliance and the Global Development Commons, which is implemented by DAI, and cosponsored by Georgetown's Mortara Center for International Studies, the McDonough School, USAID, and the Society for International Development.

DAI Named Among the Most Exceptional Companies in Maryland

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI was last night named number nine in The Gazette of Politics and Business's annual "P&B53" rankings, which honor the 53 "most exceptional" companies in the State of Maryland.

"We are proud to be named to this list alongside companies that have made such outstanding contributions in their various fields," said Jean Gilson, DAI's Vice President for Strategy and Marketing, who accepted the award at a ceremony attended by more than 300 people at the Doubletree Hotel in Bethesda, Md.

A keynote speech by Ed Henry, CNN's Senior White House Correspondent, kicked off the awards dinner.

"In our case, as a 100 percent employee-owned company, an award of this nature speaks directly to the professionalism and the performance of our staff, not only the 350 people here in Bethesda but the thousands more in our projects and offices overseas," said Gilson. "So on behalf of everyone on the executive team, let me thank my fellow employees for another exceptional year."

The P&B53 judges evaluated the nominated companies according to their record of innovation, their revenue growth over the past three years (with a special eye to how they had responded to the economic downturn of late 2008), their workplace environment, and their community activities. First place in the rankings went to MedImmune, the Gaithersburg-based biotech firm.

"I applaud these exceptional Maryland businesses that are consistently on the leading edge of innovation and doing their part to help through their pro-active community service programs. To make the 53 list is a great accomplishment," said Cliff Chiet, publisher of The Gazette P&B. All the winning companies are profiled in a special edition of The Gazette P&B.

Published weekly, The Gazette P&B focuses on the business and political news of the state of Maryland. It is part of Post-Newsweek Media Inc., a division of The Washington Post Company.

DAI's Jean Gilson Joins Board of Society for International Development, Washington

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST

Jean Gilson, Vice President of DAI's Strategy and Marketing Group, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Society for International Development-Washington D.C. Chapter (SID-Washington). Her one-year term begins immediately.

SID is a global forum of individuals and institutions concerned with sustainable economic, social, and political development. The organization has more than 3,000 members and 50 chapters in 125 countries; SID-Washington is its most active chapter worldwide.

"I'm delighted to continue the long and happy association between DAI and SID-Washington," said Gilson. Former DAI Chief Executive Officer Tony Barclay served as president of the chapter from 1996 to 1998 and still serves as an ex-officio member.

Ms. Gilson is an experienced and accomplished board member, having been elected three times to the DAI Board of Directors, and served as a director of ACLEDA Bank in Cambodia. She currently serves on two educational boards and the Board of The Development Practitioners Forum, a nonprofit organization launched earlier this year to meet the needs of people who are implementing development projects around the world.

Ms. Gilson has 25 years of experience in the economic development field, including two stints with DAI and six years of service with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): two years as Senior Policy Advisor to the Millennium Challenge Account Secretariat, serving as the key liaison between USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and four years as the first USAID Representative in Hanoi since the end of the Vietnam War. She opened that office in September 2000.

Ms. Gilson holds an M.A. in international law and economics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, an M.B.A. equivalence certificate from the First National Bank of Chicago, and a B.A. in economics from Georgetown University.

Moldova Lauded in World Bank Report for Business Reforms

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST

Moldova, which has struggled with a communist legacy of public agencies uninterested in the woes of business, was recently cited as a top business reformer in the World Bank's Doing Business 2010 report.

The nation improved from 103rd to 94th in the most recent Doing Business annual world rankings, which measure a nation's business regulations, property rights, tax burdens, access to credit, and cost of exporting and importing. Moldova's improvement of nine places in the rankings made it the sixth-best reformer out of 183 nations measured.

The small, landlocked country, located between Romania and Ukraine, was lauded for lowering its rates for social security contributions paid by employers; easing business start-up by expediting company registration; and simplifying property registration by eliminating the requirement for a cadastral sketch, thus reducing the time and number of steps needed to register.

Moldova is being assisted in its reform programs by the Business Regulatory and Tax Administration Reform (BIZTAR) project, a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded initiative whose implementation is led by DAI. BIZTAR is now working on business reforms in five more areas, while construction reforms the project helped institute are expected to be enacted into law later this year, reducing the time required to obtain construction permits from 292 days to around 150.

The World Bank's recognition of Moldova offers further encouragement for reformers as a newly elected government committed to improving governance takes power this month.

DAI's Rob Dressen Joins USIP Panel Discussion on "Haiti: A Republic of NGOs?"

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST

After Hurricane Dean ravaged Haiti in August 2007, relief workers converged on a village just 30 miles from the capital of Port-au-Prince where peasants' homes and crops had been wiped out. Those relief efforts, however, were news to many in the Haitian government. The work was instead being organized and run by international organizations, essentially on their own.

Such a disconnect between the Haitian government and aid groups trying to help the Haitian people is not uncommon. In fact, many of the best and brightest Haitians do not work for the country's government but instead for foreign-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), a contradiction that keeps Haiti's own institutions from maturing and makes it difficult for the nation to oversee and sustain effective development.

So concluded an expert panel convened yesterday at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) in Washington, D.C., in a program titled "Haiti: A Republic of NGOs?"

"If and when the government and its ministries have the capacity and creativity to help build this country from the bottom up, that would be a glorious, wonderful day," said John Chromy, vice president of CHF International. Moderated by USIP's Robert Maguire, the panel also included Donna Barry, advocacy and policy director of Partners in Health; Francois Pierre-Louis, an associate professor at Queens College in New York and special advisor to former Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis; and Robert (Rob) Dressen, senior vice president of DAI.

Haiti's reliance on NGOs in recent decades stems from political upheaval, endemic social instability, and natural circumstances such as annual torrential storms, including four hurricanes in 2008 alone -- conditions that collectively have left the nation and its people in dire need of basic health, financial, and agricultural services, among others. Roadwork, bridgework, and other construction has also proven difficult to maintain.

Hundreds of NGOs have worked to address these needs, but their dispersed efforts and the chronic intractability of Haiti's problems have prompted new impetus toward making sure NGOs work with greater efficacy and an eye toward Haitian self-reliance. This year, former President Bill Clinton and global healthcare advocate Dr. Paul Farmer were appointed United Nations special envoys to the nation, which since 2004 has been subject to a UN peacekeeping mission.

Dressen, a banker for 25 years currently in charge of DAI's project management function, headed DAI's microfinance programs in Haiti from 1997 until 2002. While small- and microlending institutions have taken root across the country in both urban and rural areas, he noted, there are still no microfinance laws, oversight body, credit bureaus, or consumer protection laws in Haiti to backbone this sector.

"Microfinance has filled a tremendous gap in the financial structure of the country," Dressen said. "But there is a limit to how much microfinance can do. You cannot build an economic dynamo on microfinance."

Dressen said that national economic growth programs and institutional development and reform need to be established in Haiti in order to sustain its microfinance industry, which is already managed and operated by Haitians, and to generate employment and investment. "A long-term exit strategy [for NGOs] has to begin on day one, but development takes time," he cautioned.

The idea of providing more development funds directly to the Haitian government occupied much of the panel's discussion. Some panelists and audience members bristled at the suggestion that Haitian institutions such as its education and health ministries are too weak to manage development.

"It's easy to say that they are too weak, that they can't do it," Barry said, "but [development] monies haven't been going to the ministries," even for items as basic as office space and computers. As a possible solution, she cited proposals that would partner development specialists with Haitian ministries to improve their capacity.

"NGOs absolutely have to be in partnership with the governments where they are working," she said.

Pierre-Louis, who noted the Hurricane Dean example and rued the fact that many top Haitians opt to work for foreign development organizations instead of the "demoralized" government, said the donor community can certainly influence the government's future capacity.

"As a Haitian, I would say the solution is in our hands," Pierre-Louis said. "We are looking for some benchmarks. What kind of compromises must be made to get it together? What can we do in five years, in 10 years, and in 20 years? Until then, it doesn't make sense for the foreign institutions to leave."

Indonesia's Carbon Goals are Achievable, OCSP's Meijaard Tells Radio Australia

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST

Indonesia's government-backed National Climate Change Council, or NCCC, announced this week an ambitious 20-year roadmap for the nation to cut its carbon emissions by more than 40 percent from 2005 levels, with an emphasis on reducing deforestation, degradation of peat land, and power use.

The NCCC calculated Indonesia's emissions to be 2.3 gigatons (billions of tons) of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2005, and forecasted them to reach 2.8 gigatons in 2020 and 3.6 gigatons by 2030. But Indonesia could reduce emissions by as much as 2.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, according to the NCCC, through the adoption of 150 different programs, in effect bringing the level down to 1.3 gigatons.

The NCCC estimated it would cost more than US$30 billion to reach the goal. Deciding how to pay for the necessary programs is one of the challenges Indonesia will ponder in the months leading up to December's United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, at which Indonesia is expected formally to present its position on climate change.

DAI subcontractor Erik Meijaard, a forest scientist with the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP), said in an interview with Radio Australia that he believed Indonesia, one of the world's largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, could make a serious attempt at reaching the reduction target.

"I think it all comes down to political will," Meijaard said. "If the government is serious about this and gets the support from the different departments and the different levels of provincial district government, certainly they can make it work. I've seen Indonesia do these things before, so I've got confidence that they can pull it off."

OCSP, a rainforest protection project, implements policy reform, law enforcement, public outreach, and site-based conservation measures that reduce the destruction of Indonesia's rich biodiversity, a loss that threatens the remaining populations of wild orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra and greatly reduces the habitat's carbon-storing capacity.

The link between orangutans and carbon was recognized by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when, during the 2007 climate conference, he launched the Indonesian orangutan action plan, which was facilitated by OCSP and others.

"If I may draw an analogy, the polar bear represents the problem of melting ice-caps, where there is little we can directly do to help," said President Yudhoyono. "The orangutan represents a solution, an interlinked process in which we stop deforestation, save endangered forest wildlife, store greenhouse gas emissions. If we do all this right, we will ultimately save polar bears and the entire earth."

In addition to calling for a halt to rainforest destruction, the NCCC is advocating more use of hybrid and electric vehicles, and efficiency improvements to internal combustion engines, electrical appliances, lighting, and water heating.

"This [report] will provide guidance for the environment ministry and the council to move forward to follow the world's trend to enter a low carbon development growth," said environment minister Rachmat Witoelar, according to Reuters.

Under an emerging United Nations scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), emerging nations such as Indonesia can potentially earn billions of dollars by setting aside and rehabilitating their forests, and selling carbon offsets to richer nations to help them meet their emissions goals. A global framework for REDD is expected to be agreed upon in Copenhagen.

A new component of OCSP, the Private Sector Sustainability Facility (PSSF), is strengthening private sector partnerships for forest and biodiversity conservation, and working to engage Indonesia's private sector in orangutan conservation initiatives by, for example, encouraging current trends toward valuation of natural resources -- a critical component of the REDD process.

Meijaard told Radio Australia that Indonesia has made strides toward mitigating the increasing rate of pollution caused by illegal logging and by its lucrative palm oil industry, for which carbon-absorbing rainforests are razed and burned, and peat lands drained, to make way for oil palm farms.

"A couple of years back everyone saw something that simply wouldn't be resolved; the financial interests in illegal logging were just too big, the governance was too poor, and it just wouldn't change," Meijaard said. "The government took it very seriously and involved army and police very effectively, and I wouldn't say illegal logging has disappeared, but certainly, from what I can see in the field, it's come down a lot."

Indonesia's government is aware of the complexities faced in designing, paying for, and implementing the programs recommended by the NCCC, Meijaard observed.

"It's a simple idea, but so many things have to fall in place," he said. "The whole carbon accounting, your land-use planning, the poor governance that's going to be in place in the areas where the savings have to made, and the avoiding of deforestation -- it's a real challenge."

To read and listen to the story by Radio Australia, click here.

Pilot Project Gets Green Light to Convert Palm Oil Waste into Biofuel

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST

A pilot project in Aceh, Indonesia recently won approval to collect the waste byproducts generated at a palm oil production site and use them as feedstock for making biodiesel.

The project, proposed in a paper by DAI consultant Thomas B. Fricke, will create a prototype for developing biofuel feedstocks for local and international biodiesel markets. Indonesia's palm oil industry is a significant provider of livelihoods, but also a prolific polluter. The project's significance lies in the fact that it goes beyond merely using the oil from oil palm fruit: it converts the entire captured biomass into renewable energy resources.

Eventually, according to Fricke, the project -- which will expand an existing small-scale processing plant for palm oil byproducts -- could help turn a notoriously dirty industry into a relatively green one.

"By using both the biomass from the plantation as well as the processing residues from palm oil production (fibers, kernel shells, palm oil mill effluent, residual oil, etc.), bioenergy from palm plantations can have an effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Fricke writes, noting that bioenergy is a clean-energy alternative to traditional carbon-based fuel sources such as coal.

An initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Environmental Services Program (ESP), the pilot project is directly tied to Governor Irwandi Yusuf's Aceh Green Economic Development and Investment Strategy, commonly known as "Aceh Green." The governor launched Aceh Green in December 2007 with the support of local and international advisors, including Mr. Fricke. ESP supports Aceh Green's efforts especially related to job creation for ex-combatants in this previously war-torn region.

According to the Aceh Green summary document, "biofuels will be based initially on palm oil and branch out to include other products such as jatropha, sago palm, and sugarcane. A framework for Aceh's biofuels industry -- based on avoided deforestation, carbon credits, and strict sustainability standards -- will be set up. This will serve to distinguish Aceh from other parts of Indonesia and regions of the world and boost investor and consumer confidence in the province."

In recent years, biofuel mandates have spurred the development in Indonesia of palm oil and jatropha for biodiesel, and cassava and sugarcane for bioethanol, but these products are making uneven progress and facing criticism for using food crops as fuels. But non-food-grade byproducts of palm fruit and palm oil production are relatively abundant in Aceh, Fricke writes, and could contribute to sustainable biofuel production for Aceh's household energy, rural industrial fuel, and power generation needs.

Fricke recommends the following core principles and practices be applied in developing sustainable biofuel feedstocks in Indonesia and Aceh:

Give priority to non-food-grade feedstocks over food-grade materials;

Maximize the collection and utilization of waste materials with positive impacts on smallholders, cooperatives, and small and medium-sized enterprises;

Optimize the use of existing facilities and established production bases to avoid destructive palm industry expansion in forested areas and peatlands;

Select strategic locations to collect feedstocks and develop infrastructure;
Install proven, cost-effective technologies that can use multiple feedstocks; and

Create viable financial incentives for feedstock production and subsidies for biofuel utilization at household, rural industry, power generation, and vehicle fuel distribution levels, applicable for private as well as public companies.

DAI's Erdmann Recommends Scaling Up Greener Agricultural Practices in Madagascar

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST

Madagascar, home to some of the world's richest biodiversity, must scale up its environmentally friendly agricultural practices in order to save the island's natural forests and resources, DAI's Thomas K. Erdmann advocated this week in Nairobi, Kenya, at the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry.

Slash-and-burn agriculture, in which forests are razed and burned to create farmland, has been especially damaging to Madagascar, which is losing approximately 5 percent of its natural forests per year. Erdmann explained a no-burning technique that DAI has implemented in Madagascar as an alternative to the slash-and-burn practice that continues to ravage the tropical island's flora and fauna, 80 percent of which is endemic.

Erdmann, regional coordinator of the recently concluded Eco-Regional Initiatives to Promote Alternatives to Slash-And-Burn Practices (ERI), a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project, said that Malagasy farmers have favorably reviewed a technique implemented by DAI that builds on a largely forgotten traditional practice known as tavy boka. The no-burn technique was introduced via hands-on training and demonstrations, usually adjacent to traditionally farmed (slashed and burned) hillsides, allowing farmers to compare results.

Under tavy boka, a thick mulch is made from cleared vegetation, and woody, contoured hedgerows are installed. The mulch is finely chopped to accelerate decomposition and evenly spread to suppress weeds and sprouts.

Crops such as rain-fed rice, cassava, and maize are directly seeded or planted in the mulch. Leguminous cover crops such as Mucuna pruriens, cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), and Vigna umbellate are introduced between the hedgerows in the second season; in cases where the soil fertility is poor, cowpeas are planted in the first season. Crops are rotated (cereals and tubers with legumes) and again directly seeded or planted into the vegetative cover.

Farmers establish live fences around tavy boka plots using the multipurpose Jatropha curcas shrub. Depending on growth, shrub hedgerows can be pruned and their biomass used to create mulch in some areas of the parcels. In areas closer to the natural forest, ERI staff encouraged farmers to experiment with planting fruit trees, cloves, and black pepper in the bands between the hedgerows. Such land use can create a permaculture or perennial tree crop buffer zone in areas adjacent to the natural forest corridor.

The ERI Toamasina program established more than 100 tavy boka demonstration and test plots in collaboration with participating farmers. These plots totaled approximately 30 hectares, and more than 350 farmers received hands-on instruction in the technique. Some plots were established on the farmers' own initiative after the initial training.

Overall, participating farmers reported higher yields (especially for cassava and maize) but also increased labor. Erdmann expects that yields will continue to increase for several seasons before attaining optimal, steady-state levels. Labor should decrease over time as hedgerows establish themselves and cover crops become easier to maintain and re-establish.

USAID has funded conservation and development activities in biodiversity-rich landscapes in Madagascar for more than 15 years. Despite the nation's recent and sometimes violent political upheaval, Erdmann said the continuation of projects such as ERI is crucial to protect the island's irreplaceable biodiversity and avoid the climate change impact associated with deforestation.

"The fact that ERI was the only permanent, external conservation and development actor in many isolated areas next to biodiversity-rich forests cannot be overemphasized," Erdmann said. "Support to farmers in these areas via dedicated senior staff, field agents, and farmer technicians must continue.

"If these areas are cut off from external support and links to the outside world, there is a high risk that farmers will revert to traditional, extensive agricultural practices that will result in forest conversion and loss."

To see a poster summarizing Erdmannâs presentation before the Congress of Agroforestry, click here.

Global Development Commons Partners to Map Incidents in Today's Afghan Elections

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST

As Afghan citizens go to the polls today, a DAI-supported initiative -- the U.S. Agency for International Development's Global Development Commons -- is helping to provide timely online reporting and mapping of election-related violence and other incidents.

The Global Development Commons is partnering with Fortius One's GeoCommons, Google, Development Seed, Relief Star-Tides, Synergy Strike Force, and others to enhance the transparency of the August 20 election and generate data for subsequent analysis and policymaking. You can see the current maps and layers of data uploaded here.

Volunteers from the Synergy Strike Force, which supports humanitarian relief and stabilization efforts in post-conflict environments, are on the ground in Jalalabad, collecting and sharing local data in real time by means of an SMS platform developed by Ushahidi, one of the winners of the Global Development Commons' USAID Development 2.0 Challenge.

The open source platform allows anyone interested in contributing to the effort to upload data here. People in country may report incidents by text message to 93 79 404 0569.

The potential uses of this data are numerous. Mapping election-related incidents with an overlay of demographic data, for example, or against levels of turnout may shed light on the legitimacy of the electoral process and yield lessons learned for future elections. You can read about the potential uses of the maps at www.GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net. For more information about the partners and tools involved, click here.

The Global Development Commons initiative seeks to catalyze innovations for better international development results. It is supported by staff from the DAI-implemented Global Development Alliance Strategic Support Program.

Summer 2009 Issue of Developments Newsletter Now Available

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST

The summer issue of DAI's Developments newsletter is now available.

Leading off the issue, Bryan Rhodes and David Elliot describe the encouraging momentum of public-private partnerships in what seems, on the surface, an unlikely context: war-torn Afghanistan. But as the authors point out, Afghanistan's advantageous geographical position, the entrepreneurial instincts of its people and of international investors, and a concerted effort by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development Activity have made Afghanistan a showcase for the agency's Global Development Alliances.

In the first of two articles focusing on Vietnam, Ann Hudock -- Managing Director of DAI's Governance sector -- discusses the role economic governance reform can play in catalyzing broader democratic progress within a society. From the Health sector, John Bowman, Patrice Gautier, and Dominic Smith show how the Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) team is assisting Vietnam's traditional free-range chicken farmers to produce and market their birds -- much preferred by Vietnamese consumers -- in a way that is competitive with industrial chicken operations yet certified as safe.

Where Bowman, Gautier, and Smith work at the intersection of health and agricultural value chains, Del McCluskey, Allen Hollenbach, and Rich Rapier work at the intersection of health and environmental services. Their article, "The Toilet Takes Center Stage," reflects on the challenges of addressing basic sanitation in developing countries, where 2.4 billion people lack access to hygienic sanitation facilities and where, accordingly, open defecation and other unsanitary practices are widespread. They review lessons learned from DAI projects in Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Among the other articles in this issue:

Verena Oberrauch writes from the West Bank on the promising early successes of the U.K. Department for International Development's Facility for New Market Development, a project that is quickly helping Palestinian businesses -- 187 of them so far -- to develop new products and enter new markets;

Natalie Domond, Shannon Sarbo, and Lauren Caskey explore the practical dimensions of implementing USAID's Poverty Assessment Tools -- mechanisms that measure the degree of poverty among beneficiaries of USAID microenterprise assistance and thereby help ensure agency funding is reaching the poorest of the poor. The authors outline lessons learned from implementations in Haiti, Malawi, Mexico, and Timor-Leste, focusing on how the tools can be used both to comply with congressional mandates and to deepen development impact; and

Rick Gold, DAI's Technical Area Manager for Integrity and Accountability, discusses the rule of law and DAI's response to this emerging development discipline.

In his CEO's Desk column, President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Boomgard seeks to clear the air on a subject that has generated much heat in recent months: government contracting. Addressing three areas where "we might find ground for constructive discussion," he contrasts the unique nature of DAI with the generic image of contractors presented in popular coverage; discusses the great variety of services and products provided by government vendors, and how that relates to the insourcing debate; and sheds light on faulty cost comparisons between government and contractors. "I sincerely believe that the discussion about contractors will eventually become less political and better focused," Boomgard concludes. "Eventually, the conversation must shift from contractor bashing to how we can all do our jobs better."

Finally, in the DAIdeas publication that accompanies this issue, Patrick Doyle -- DAI's Technical Area Manager for Energy and Climate Change -- asks whether Amman can become "a cleantech capital." Taking his starting point from a recent assignment to evaluate Jordan's energy sector, with an emphasis on renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, Doyle shows how the cleantech sector is "ripe with promise" and ends by offering recommendations for making that promise a reality.

To view Developments online, click here. To view DAIdeas, click here. For print copies or to be added to our mailing list, contact Marcia Liu.

Indigenous Filipino Women Lead Sewage Project to Promote Health, Protect Lake

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST

Construction has begun on toilets, septic tanks, and leaching fields in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato province, Philippines, where indigenous women are leading a project to mitigate the effect of human waste on the community's health and the lake on which it depends.

In addition to facilitating construction, the 121-member Cooperative of Women in Health and Development (COWHED), which is made up of members of the T'boli tribe, is preparing the household-beneficiaries for their role in maintaining the new system and leading an information campaign on waste management.

Formed in 1995, COWHED runs weaving and bead-making businesses, and educates T'boli women on maternal and childcare issues and livelihood opportunities. The wastewater management project is a step toward healthier family environments, said COWHED Chairwoman Melchi G. Uyasan.

"The women used to attribute deaths of unborn babies and pregnancy-related diseases to traditional beliefs when, in fact, they lacked prenatal care," Uyasan said. "Health problems at home compound the problems of T'boli women. Through this project they will learn more about solid waste, water, and sanitation."

COWHED is partnering with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Philippine Environmental Governance Program (EcoGov2) and the Lake Sebu and South Cotabato governments. The project -- funded by a grant from EcoGov2 and contributions from the provincial and municipal governments -- is building four communal septic tanks and toilets for 40 houses in the lakeshore communities of barangay Poblacion. Tribal leaders donated four tracts of land to use for the septic tanks and leach fields.

A 2008 wastewater assessment found that many lakeshore households and establishments directly discharge wastewater and sewage either into the ground or lake. The communal wastewater and sewage treatment systems are intended to reduce the contamination of ground water sources and the lake, where proliferating water lilies, water hyacinth, and green algae already indicate water quality problems.

In Lake Sebu, the T'boli women have inadequate access to maternal healthcare, education, and income-generating activities, according to Uyasan, the COWHED leader, and their personal development is too often limited to bearing and raising children and attending to their husbands' needs. Uyasan said she appreciated the toilet and septic tank project for actively engaging T'boli women in solutions to their environmental problems.

"For the first time, COWHED is at the frontline of environmental concerns in Lake Sebu," she said. "Promoting proper disposal of solid waste and wastewater at the household level helps protect the health of T'boli families. This will ease the burden of T'boli women, who can then spend more time on their livelihood."

DAI's Piper Leads Panel on Employee Stock Ownership Plans

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST

Kent Piper, DAI's vice president of financial planning, led a panel discussion July 24 at the ESOP Association's Sustainability Seminar in Schaumburg, Ill. Piper and his group presented views on how best to calculate and manage repurchase obligations in employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs.

DAI has been employee-owned since its founding in 1970, Piper noted. In its early days, DAI ownership was concentrated in relatively few hands, but now DAI is wholly owned by its ESOP, a broad-based retirement plan that represents hundreds of employees. Although the ESOP model poses various challenges, employee ownership offers significant benefits to the firm and its clients. "We remain completely independent, driven not by investors, parent companies, or external stockholders but by our own commitment to the mission," Piper said.

"We have every incentive to pursue efficiency and invest in the company and its people, which means we can attract and retain superb development professionals. Those professionals have a personal stake in the success of the firm and by extension the success of our clients. And we field a workforce that is accountable and engaged, held to account not only by the client but also by their fellow owners."

DAI was selected for the panel as a result of its proactive planning and analysis of its repurchase obligation, Piper said, as well as the company's effective communication with its board of directors in managing the obligation.

Piper was joined on the panel by Michael Cheek, senior vice president for administration at Herff Jones, Inc., an Indianapolis-based manufacturer, and Tim Jonas, chief financial officer at McKay Nursery Company of Waterloo, Wisconsin. The seminar was led by executives from the Crowe Horwath accounting firm and Prairie Capital Advisors, and attracted leadership of ESOP-owned companies from around the country.

The Washington, D.C.-based ESOP Association, founded in 1978, is a national nonprofit organization with 18 local chapters serving approximately 2,500 ESOP companies, professionals committed to ESOPs, and companies considering the implementation of an ESOP. Its objectives are to promote and enhance laws before Congress and regulatory agencies that govern ESOPs, and provide members with expert educational ESOP programming and information.

DAI Opens Office in Islamabad

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI, which has implemented more than 30 projects in Pakistan since the early 1980s, yesterday launched its newest corporate office: DAI Pakistan.

DAI Pakistan coordinates DAI's marketing and business development initiatives in the country and will assist in the implementation of development programs, including the current Pakistan Legislative Strengthening Program.

The Pakistan team is based in Islamabad and led by Managing Director Zahid Elahi, an economist with more than 20 years of development experience specializing in decentralized governance, microfinance, and institutional and community development.

"Pakistan's social and economic development is crucial not only to the welfare of the Pakistani people but increasingly to the security and stability of the region," said Mr. Elahi, whose career has encompassed work with the Government of Pakistan, The Asia Foundation, and various local and international nongovernmental organizations and international donors.

"I'm looking forward to bringing the full weight of the DAI organization to bear in advancing the development of Pakistan."

DAI's record of long- and short-term projects in Pakistan includes water and irrigation management, agricultural development, microfinance, narcotics awareness and control, and fiscal decentralization. Clients have included the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme, Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the U.K. Department for International Development.

In addition to DAI Pakistan, DAI has permanent offices in Bethesda, Maryland (U.S.A.), London (U.K.), Amman (Jordan), Ramallah (Palestine), Johannesburg (South Africa), and Mexico City (Mexico).

Climate Change and Development are Intertwined, Panel States

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST

Energy, climate change, and development are inextricably linked -- so concluded a panel of experts Thursday at "Bridging the Gap in the Developing World on Global Climate Change Policies," a discussion in Washington, D.C., moderated by DAI's Patrick Doyle. Doyle is co-chair of the Society for International Development's Energy and Infrastructure Workgroup.

The next round of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty will take place this December in Copenhagen. Its goal is to reach an ambitious global climate agreement for the period beyond 2012, when the commitment period for the current Kyoto Protocol ends. In addition to seeking ways to stabilize worldwide greenhouse gas concentrations, many of the Copenhagen participants will be advocating for the need to deliver clean technology to developing countries in ways that make a difference in people's lives.

"Addressing climate change is part of a sustainable development program," said Salman al-Farisi, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Indonesia, and one of Thursday's panelists. "But without the technologies, it is very difficult for developing countries to cope with climate change."

Pointing toward Copenhagen, panelist Warren Evans, senior director of the World Bank's Environment Department, said that development funds are currently limited for the development of clean technology such as wind, solar and hydro power, biomass, and biofuels.

"Technology finance has to accommodate the demand," he said. "Our priority is to get energy to [developing countries], and countries can only go so far with the monies and technologies available today." Evans noted the huge cost difference, for example, between coal- and wind-powered energy sources.

Evans described the current and planned World Bank-managed Clean Investment Funds, including the multibillion-dollar fund established by the G-7 that is currently providing concessionary finance for renewable energy projects in Egypt, Mexico, and Turkey.

Mexico has been lauded for its climate change policy, such as a $550 million plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Mexico City. It is one of the first developing countries to set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, at 50 percent below 2002 levels by 2050, if it receives technological and financial support from developed countries. Panelist Alejandro Posados, Mexico's Secretary of the Environment representative in Washington, said his country is committed to supporting the long-term goals agreed in Copenhagen.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Posados noted, is pushing for a $10 billion international "green fund" to be administered by the World Bank or some other multilateral agency to finance green technology projects in many nations.

"No [greenhouse gas emissions] goal will generate enthusiasm if the means to achieve it are not secured," Posados said.
Panelists after their presentations were queried by audience members on topics such as aid to small island states vulnerable to rising sea levels, the diversion of official development aid toward climate change projects, and the role of agriculture in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

"It should be a no-brainer," Evans said in reference to agriculture, citing issues such as water conservation and crop yields. "Addressing climate change is also addressing food security."

Doyle, DAI's Technical Area Manager for Energy and Climate Change, said that for the world to have hope of preventing the most catastrophic effects of climate change, major developing countries have to reduce their fast-rising greenhouse gas emissions.

"There are huge equity issues," Doyle said. "Developed countries must rapidly reduce emissions and increase their financial and technical support to help developing countries mitigate emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. But we must also have major participation by those developing countries in a global agreement to reduce emissions.

"There are several alternative policy options that will be discussed in Copenhagen, and there is hope for a global agreement that will be equitable and effective."

Open Development Camp Explores New Ways to Collaborate

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST

Approximately 140 devotees of information and communication technologies convened last week at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., to explore ways to share international development data and collaborate more constructively.

At Open Development Camp: Data and Collaboration, participants delved into topics such as visualization platforms, cloud computing, digital brainstorming, and open standards based on international development markup language (IDML). The goal: to enable better project planning, create more searchable and accessible information, and encourage crowd participation in addressing challenges in developing countries.

One of the greatest challenges in development cooperation is that there is no feedback loop, said Owen Barder, director of AidInfo, in his opening remarks. The people who make choices are not the people who are most affected by whether those projects and programs work.

Information enables donors to be more effective -- they can coordinate with government and with each other. The private sector can make better choices, too.

The camp was sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Developments Global Development Commons (GDC) project in partnership with Development Initiatives AidInfo, the Development Gateway Foundation, Forum One Communications, and the World Bank. Attendees included project managers, development technical experts, geospatial analysts, mobile technology specialists, and others.

The camp has invited interested parties to join the discussion by registering at http://opendev.ning.com. Camp participants and others have used the site to suggest session topics, spotlight development challenges, and continue conversations launched in camp sessions. The camps Twitter tag is #opendevcamp.

The GDC promotes innovations in international development through knowledge sharing, partnerships, and collaborative problem-solving. DAI advises the GDC through USAIDs Global Development Alliance (GDA), to which DAI provides core services. The GDA builds new, sustainable partnerships to improve the scale and impact of international development work.

The GDC team also created and maintains GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net, a website built by DAI on an open source platform that highlights ideas that address development projects.

Clean Energy Association REEEP Welcomes DAI as Partner

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST

The Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), a global public-private partnership dedicated to expanding clean energy technologies, has admitted DAI as a partner member.

DAI joins a roster of more than 300 REEEP partners that includes 46 national governments, as well as regional and central government agencies, multilateral organizations, nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and higher education institutions. Launched in 2002 at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, REEEP is funded by 12 national governments and the European Union.

We are very impressed by the ethos and success of REEEP, and by the work it is doing around the world, said Patrick Doyle, DAIs Technical Area Manager for Energy and Climate Change.

REEEP's broad-based membership speaks well to its reputation and expertise. Were proud to have become a member of REEEP, and confident well be able to contribute DAIs expertise to partnership opportunities that address our common goals.

The REEEP portfolio of approximately 100 projects in 40 countriesprimarily in the developing worldprioritizes replicable, scalable projects that can build markets for renewable and efficient energy and promote energy innovation. REEEP-backed projects are designed to remove market barriers to clean energy and are beginning to deliver new business models, policy recommendations, risk mitigation instruments, and regulatory measures.

In addition to organizing and funding projects, REEEP facilitates an array of networking initiatives, policy and regulation efforts, information gateways, and international collaborations.

Philippines Marine Protected Areas Win Environmental Awards

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST

Two Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) whose establishment and enforcement are supported by DAI and its local partners captured top honors as the most outstanding MPAs in the Philippines at the 2009 "Para el Mar" awards event, held June 28-30 at the Conference of Coastal Municipalities in Cebu City.

The 179-hectare Pilar Municipal Marine Park in Pilar town, located in the Camotes group of islands in Cebu, won first place from a group of 12 finalists, which were in turn selected from a list of 70 nominees. Second place was awarded to the Tambunan MPA of Tabina Municipality, Zamboanga del Sur. Both are supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Environmental Governance Program Phase II (EcoGov) and the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

A panel of marine management experts assessed the finalists' management strategies and their effectiveness as gauged by ecological and socioeconomic impact. Criteria included the extent of community involvement in managing the MPA, the degree of local government and community co-management, the enforcement of environmental laws, and the participation of other stakeholders.

In accepting the first place prize, Pilar Mayor Jesus Fernandez, Jr. asked his fellow local chief executives to fully support their marine sanctuaries, especially with respect to strict implementation of the Fisheries Code.

"It is a matter of political will, and thinking about food availability for our future grandchildren," Fernandez said.

Three other EcoGov-assisted MPAs were named finalists: the Bangaan MPA in Tungawan Muncipality, Zamboanga Sibugay Province; and the Bibilik MPA, in Dumalinao Muncipality, and Talisay MPA in Tabina Muncipality, both of which are part of Illana Bay in Zamboanga del Sur Province. The five Eco Gov-assisted MPAs are monitored and enforced by a team of fish wardens, locally known as the Bantay Dagat.

The MPA recognition event is a program of the MPA Support Network, a consortium of 20 agencies and organizations dedicated to complementing local initiatives in MPA management.

The Pilar Municipal Marine Park was established in 2005. Its marine sanctuary core zone covers 17.93 hectares and its buffer zone 11.8 hectares. Coral reefs, sea grasses, mangroves, and sandy bottom ecosystems are found within the park, which is managed by a multisector management board with the assistance of EcoGov. Since its establishment as an MPA, the area has experienced a notable increase in fish catch among fisherfolk who use artisanal methods.

The same marked increase has been observed since the establishment of the Tambunan MPA in 2003. The 103-hectare protected area hosts mackerel and various tuna species, as well as needlefish, mollusks, and crustaceans.

Seminar Focuses on Fiscal Policy Units in Developing Countries

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST

Political leaders rely on economic data, trends, and analysis to make sound decisions, draft realistic budgets, and analyze the effects of their actions. In developing countries, competent fiscal policy units can provide leaders with this information and play a major role in making their economies more stable, credible, and accessible -- qualities that in turn foster stronger political governance.

"Basic principles of good governance dictate that public expenditures should be allocated to maximize welfare, revenues should be collected fairly and efficiently, and the public should have access to a wide range of public services," according to Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, an economist and advisor to USAID's Fiscal Reform and Economic Governance (Fiscal Reform II) project.

"Sound fiscal management provides the foundation for good economic governance, which in turn requires effective communication and coordination among key government departments and institutions."

Martinez, coauthor with Eunice Heredia-Ortiz of Designing and Establishing Fiscal Policy Analysis Units, joined Fiscal Reform II Chief of Party Mark Gallagher on June 30 in Washington, D.C., to lead a seminar on the best ways to create and support locally appropriate fiscal policy analysis units in developing and transition countries.

Some 30 people attended, including economists from the U.S. Treasury and State departments, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds Fiscal Reform II and hosted the seminar. David Dod, the Activity Manager for Fiscal Reform II, gave introductory remarks.

Martinez, Regents Professor of Economics and Director of the International Studies Program at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Public Policy, presented the findings of his recent review of best practices in designing and establishing fiscal policy analysis units. He discussed the preconditions for a successful unit, the spectrum of potential functions and institutional settings, staffing and capacity building considerations, and sustainability factors.

Gallagher then presented the case of the Research, Policy, and Planning Department of the Tanzania Revenue Department -- a successful example of sustained, relevant, and credible fiscal policy expertise. He discussed lessons learned, focusing on success factors such as senior-leadership commitment, competitive and transparent hiring, strong linkages within government, and effective collaboration with outside experts.

Fiscal Reform II, which addresses fiscal and economic governance issues in developing and transition countries, hosts periodic seminars on topics related to fiscal reform and economic governance. The project provides technical leadership and support to USAID in addressing tax policy and revenue administration, budgeting and expenditure control, decentralization and intergovernmental finance, fiscal oversight and audit, public procurement, civil service reform, and other issues related to government financial systems, e-government, and economic governance.

Ocean Buoy Placed to Complete Marking of El Salvador's First Marine Protected Area

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

El Salvador recently completed demarcation of its first Marine Protected Area, a plot known as Los Cobanos totaling 21,312 hectares of ocean, mangrove forests, and sandy and rocky beaches.

Located two miles south of Acajutla international port in Punta Remedios, Department of Sonsonate, southwestern El Salvador, the area includes 20,732 hectares of the Pacific Ocean that feature rocky reefs and the only hard coral formations that occur in the Eastern Pacific between Mexico and the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border. The area also includes 580 hectares of mangrove forests that are among the national jewels of biodiversity.

The demarcation was completed June 10 with the placement of a fourth 17-foot tall, yellow polyethylene buoy, which was anchored with a 2,000-kilogram steel-carbon chain to a 5,200-kilogram dead weight located 178 feet below on the ocean floor. The four buoys are all-yellow with yellow lights and "X" marks on the top, the type used internationally to sign special interest areas. Their placement completed the measuring and marking performed under DAI's Improved Management and Conservation of Critical Watersheds (IMCW) project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

DAI assisted the technical staff of the Salvadoran Ministry of Environment to prepare the protection decree, which was signed by the Minister in December 2007. Through 2008, the project team focused on delineating and demarking of the land portion of the area, and navigating the logistics -- international regulations, technical specifications, oceanographic characteristics, and official permits -- for the placement of oceanic buoys to demarcate the corners of the marine surface.

Placement of the buoys was supported by the Government of El Salvador through Acajutla's port authorities, which provided supervision, port storage, and the use of cranes, tug boats, and equipment; and Centro Nacional de Registros (the national registry centre), which verified placement coordinates.

A local, representative team of stakeholders is developing a management plan for Los Cobanos, which will rule fisheries, land use, tourism, and other activities in a sustainable way in order to guarantee the preservation of the protected area.

IMCW seeks to reverse economic trends in rural western El Salvador -- trends that threaten the sustainability of critical ecosystems, degrade water supplies and quality, and bind farmers to environmentally destructive subsistence farming. To do so, the project develops the management of areas of high biodiversity importance while promoting responsible, sustainable economic growth. The DAI team's approach empowers local communities and stakeholders using integrated spatial planning to develop agreements on land use and land zoning for protected areas.

Following this approach, DAI helps local stakeholders improve their livelihoods and realize tangible economic benefits linked to sustainable improvements in watershed management and the conservation of biological resources. This approach directly links the sustainable protection of parks and protected areas -- and the management of ecological corridors -- to improved income- and employment-generating opportunities in high-value products such as specialty coffee, fruits and vegetables, and ecotourism.

Moldovan Tax Chief Reports Progress in Reform

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

Moldova is building a portal for electronic tax services and increasing capacity for receiving and adjudicating tax appeals as part of an initiative to streamline delivery of the country's tax services and make them more user friendly.

During a June 11 presentation at DAI headquarters in Bethesda, Md., Victor Coada, director of Moldova's State Tax Service, also discussed antifraud activities that his directorate is undertaking as well as development of new taxpayer services.

DAI/Nathan Group, a joint venture of DAI and Nathan Associates Inc., is assisting Moldova to simplify its tax services and business regulations under the Business and Tax Administration Reform (BIZTAR) project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Also at the presentation, DAI's development specialist Bryanna Millis reported that the directorate last year drafted amendments to the tax code and developed a micro-simulation model for the updated tax code, as well as analyzed value-added tax provisions to address fraud.

Attending the presentation from USAID were Robert Aten, a team leader in the Economic Growth and Trade (EGAT) Bureau, David Dod, a senior economist with the bureau; and Valerie Chien, desk officer for Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus.

DAI President and CEO Jim Boomgard introduced Mr. Coada, and DAI's Mark Gallagher served as moderator. To round out the discussion, DAI's Christina Erickson and Steven Rozner discussed tax reform projects that DAI has implemented in El Salvador and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In coordination with BIZTAR, Mr. Coada on June 8-9 attended a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the International Monetary Fund, and on June 10 held meetings with officials from the Treasury Department and District of Columbia tax offices.

Under BIZTAR, the DAI/Nathan Group is improving the business environment in Moldova by limiting the opportunities for corruption, reducing the red tape involved in starting and operating a business, and improving tax administration.

DAI's Doyle Foresees Trillion-Dollar Carbon Market in U.S.

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

Carbon markets are growing and will expand as climate change regulation becomes more widespread and stringent. A U.S. policy with nearly full coverage of U.S. emissions would dwarf existing carbon markets -- it could be a $1 trillion carbon emission market by 2020, according to Patrick Doyle, DAI's Technical Area Manager for Energy and Climate Change.

Doyle presented his views June 16 when he led a session titled Carbon Markets, Credits, and Climate Change Policy at the Federal Environmental Symposium East at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Shortly after the symposium was opened by Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Mr. Doyle led the first breakout session with a presentation to federal government leaders in energy and the environment.

"A U.S. federal greenhouse gas cap-and-trade policy will likely enter into force by 2012, and federal agencies should be prepared for the implications of forthcoming carbon legislation," Doyle told the audience. "Climate change regulation will affect all consumers of energy, but its specific impacts on government operations will depend on the details of the policy and the carbon market rules."

Doyle's presentation raised key questions and provided likely answers based on the current state of federal legislation, including issues on who is covered by legislation, and what types of projects are eligible for carbon offsets. There are significant uncertainties on these questions at present, Doyle said, but some near certainties:

Federal entities that have power plants or large industrial sources of emissions could be regulated and required to reduce or offset emissions.

Federal entities may be able to develop carbon credits to offset emission-reduction project costs.

Transportation fuels will likely be regulated upstream, driving fuel prices higher.

Electricity generators will be regulated upstream, driving power costs higher.

There will be significant government revenues generated via auctioned permits.

The presentation included ways the policy and market structures affect federal entities' abilities to develop carbon credit projects, particularly in forestry, energy efficiency, and renewables.

Doyle also gave updates on the Northeast's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Western Climate Initiative, and California's AB-32 global warming legislation, as well as an overview of international carbon markets, both voluntary and compliance driven.

In 2008, developing countries received more than $7 billion from the purchase of carbon credits, and this capital could increase five-fold with the potential establishment of a U.S. compliance cap-and-trade system, Doyle said.

DAI has conducted carbon market assessments in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and is currently implementing projects worldwide that increase energy efficiency, expand renewable energy, and help countries assess and adapt to the effects of climate change.

DAI Responds to USA TODAY Article on Award in Afghanistan

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

On June 4, USA TODAY printed an article critical of the award to DAI of the IDEA-NEW project, an alternative livelihoods program that will continue and extend to other parts of Afghanistan the successful initiatives of the Alternative Development Program/Eastern Region.

Among other things, the story incorrectly stated that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded a "$150 million contract" to DAI, when in fact DAI will receive one third of that funding amount in a cooperative agreement. Cooperative agreements differ from contracts in various ways, including the fact that they involve no fee (no profit).

Our co-award recipients and equal partners on this cooperative agreement are Mercy Corps and ACDI/VOCA.

"DAI has built a strong reputation and track record over the past 40 years of achieving economic development results around the world for USAID and other development agencies," said DAI President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Boomgard. "We compete for all of our work and are accountable for the results we deliver. The IDEA-NEW award was based on a comprehensive and competitive procurement and reflected our company's success in creating viable options for farmers to break their dependence on the opium economy."

The most egregious aspects of the story were its selective and uncontextualized reading of the Inspector General findings and its failure to recognize the extraordinary demands of working in an environment such as Afghanistan's--a failure that does scant justice to the hundreds of DAI employees (expatriate and Afghan) who risk their lives on a daily basis to make a difference in this chronically and severely challenged part of the world.

The result is an article that casts an unfairly poor light on DAI and USAID, both on the specific IDEA-NEW award and the general issue of development assistance in Afghanistan. DAI conveyed some of its point of view in a letter to the editor, limited by the newspaper to 250 words (the letter was published June 10). We take this opportunity to respond to the article in more depth and in particular to address the larger issue of development successes in Afghanistan.

The background on the USA TODAY article is as follows. On May 11, the Inspector General (IG) released its Audit of USAID/Afghanistan's Local Governance and Community Development Project (LGCD). The program audit reviewed the activities of DAI, USAID, host country institutions, provincial reconstruction teams, and subcontractors, presenting a balanced account of both our contract's and USAID's successes and shortcomings. Notified of its findings in mid-2008, we took the recommendations extremely seriously.

"The issues identified in the audit report were real and reflect the challenges of implementing this ambitious program," said Boomgard. "All of the open issues have been addressed and the program is now performing at a much higher standard."

The USA TODAY article did not mention the positive findings of the LGCD audit, nor did it cite the extenuating circumstances acknowledged by the IG. DAI saw delays in filling key jobs, for example, because the company stood firm against corrupt local officials "wanting to influence the hiring process to hire personal friends," as the IG put it, and because technical staff faced death threats from insurgents.

With respect to the broader question of development assistance in Afghanistan, while progress has not always been as fast or as consistent as U.S. Government officials--indeed everyone in the development community--would like, the fact remains that in many areas we are making headway.

We say this on the basis of extensive experience. DAI's first engagement in Afghanistan dates back to 1977; the firm later managed two cross-border projects from a base in Peshawar from 1989 to 1993, after Soviet forces withdrew from the country. Since 2002 we have been managing projects continuously in Afghanistan for USAID and another donor. Lessons learned from the successful Afghanistan Immediate Needs Project (2004-2005) are captured in "Working Through the Challenges of Afghanistan," the May 2006 issue of DAIdeas.

We currently manage four USAID projects in Afghanistan: the Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development Activity, LGCD, IDEA-NEW, and IDEA-NEW's soon-to-be closed predecessor, the Alternative Development Program/Eastern Region (ADP/E).

These programs are delivering tangible development assistance to beneficiaries that include local communities; local, district, and provincial government leaders; various government and nongovernmental institutions; small and medium-sized enterprises; business associations; and women's organizations. At the macro level, USAID can point to the fact that Nangarhar, the second highest opium-producing province in 2007, was deemed "poppy free" in the UNODC's 2008 annual report. This achievement--vital to economic development and counter-insurgency alike--is in large part attributable to ADP/E, which has helped to rehabilitate critical infrastructure in the region and revitalized a diverse agricultural economy.

"I would like to show my appreciation...for the contribution of your program to the development of the licit economy in the Eastern region," wrote Obaidullah Ramin, Afghanistan's Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, in an October 2008 letter to DAI's Jonathan Greenham, the program's Chief of Party. "ADP/E has undoubtedly succeeded in the modernization of agriculture, the developing of agriculture markets and the provision of productive infrastructure; all of which are resulting in visible manifestations of economic growth."

To summarize some of ADP/E's key achievements in hard numbers:

Nangarhar Province has increased its vegetable production by more than 180,000 tons per year and its wheat yield by 14 percent since ADP/E began in 2005.

Program staff are currently working with almost 15,000 farmers engaged in fruit and nut production.

Some 6,260 hectares have been planted in apricot, apple, guava, pomegranate, and almonds.

ADP/E's cash-for-work projects have generated more than 6 million days of labor, employing 173,980 individuals, increasing household incomes by $22 million, and rehabilitating farm-to-market roads, irrigation systems, and other vital infrastructure.

More than 1,680 miles of irrigation canals have been rehabilitated and 420 miles of farm-to-market roads have been rehabilitated or built from scratch over the same time period. (To see a video on just one of those infrastructure projects, click here.)

In various USAID programs implemented by DAI we can point to similar examples of substantial achievements:

A workforce development program provided three-month training to more than 900 young Afghan professionals who were then matched with firms and organizations throughout the country in a follow-on internship program. Close to 80 percent of these interns have been offered full-time employment.

Each year, USAID sponsors at least 50 Afghan carpet traders to attend Domotex, the leading carpet and flooring trade show, held in Hannover, Germany. In 2008, between sales at the show itself and contracts signed for future exports, Afghan attendees went home with more than $5.2 million in contracts.

A cardboard box factory in Kandahar, jointly funded by USAID and the private sector, was built as part of a program to enhance the quality and competitiveness of Afghan fruit and vegetable exports. The factory, which produces 8,000 units per day and employs over 100 Afghans, has provided a cheaper, lighter, more protective method of packaging fresh produce. Confidence in the quality of Afghan fruit exports has increased significantly, which bodes well for future growth in licit agricultural trade.

More than 4,000 Afghan women joined together to promote the advancement of women as part of eight International Women's Day celebrations held in the conservative southern and eastern provinces this March. For many provinces, these events were the largest public gathering of women in recent memory. The message emerging from these events--progress for women is progress for all--was echoed by participants of both genders when USAID held roundtable discussions, press conferences, and public ceremonies featuring government representatives, department heads, prominent provincial women, and community and religious leaders from the eight provinces.

With funding from USAID, local public radio stations broadcast weekly roundtable discussions on controversial community issues featuring religious leaders, tribal elders, government officials, and other community members. These roundtables provide one of the few forums available for Afghan citizens to publicly hold their government to account for unfavorable policies and decisions. And the government is listening.

Again with USAID support, the provincial government in Nangarhar recently completed a 50-meter suspension bridge that connects four villages in Nangarhar's Suliman Valley, linking them to essential services such as schools, medical clinics, and markets. In the past, villagers had to travel for hours to access these services, particularly difficult during the spring floods. "We thought we were ignored by the local government in the past," said one resident. "But now when I see the bridge, I realize that the government is committed to development in our area."

Do such individual achievements add up to a rosy picture in Afghanistan? Of course not. Afghanistan remains a development challenge of extraordinary scale and complexity. There are no cookbook answers to its problems. But we know some of the key steps we need to take. One important step now under way is to address the understaffing of a development agency faced with escalating global challenges--something for which DAI has publicly advocated.

For its part, DAI will continue working to make a lasting difference in Afghanistan, abiding by the highest attainable standards of quality and professionalism on every project. Where we make mistakes we will take responsibility for them, rectify them, and move forward, as we always have done, with our mission as our guiding principle.

If you have questions about DAI's work in Afghanistan or about the USA TODAY article, please contact Steven O'Connor, DAI's Director of Communications.

New Book Describes Post-Election Heroics of DAI's Selline Korir

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

When Kenya erupted in violence following the December 2007 election, thousands of people in the Rift Valley were thrust into chaos, especially those driven from their homes by rioting mobs.

Many locked themselves inside their houses, but Selline Korir of Eldoret was determined to learn what was going on outside, and soon learned of friends forced to take refuge in schools, churches, and makeshift camps.

An estimated 1,000 people were killed and 300,000 displaced in the weeks following the election, and those numbers might have been worse if not for Korir, who made it her mission to reduce the suffering by gathering phone cards so refugees could call loved ones; rallying local leaders to tend to the killed, wounded, and homeless; and organizing mistreated women into a social force--helping to restore their dignity while facilitating talks between women from warring factions.

Korir, who last year joined DAI as a program development officer with the Kenya Transition Initiative, considers her actions during the conflict as merely normal.

"The intervention I made during the post-election violence was not meant for recognition," Korir said last week. "It was just part of the action I took at that time as a service to humanity."

Korir and eight other heroines from the conflict are profiled in Walking the Talk (Governance Forum, 2009), a book by Lucy Oriang and Wanjiku Mbugua launched May 20 in Nairobi. The book and the ceremony were funded by the Norwegian Embassy.

As recounted in the book, soon after the election, Korir, already well known through her work with the Rural Women's Peace Link (RWPL), got to work on her cell phone, learning the stories of people in distress. She persuaded associates in Nairobi to load up her by-then-depleted cell phone with more calling minutes, which she distributed to local contacts in order to work together to monitor events, including documenting cases of police brutality that Korir aired at ensuing meetings.

Korir rallied young people, politicians, government officials, media, and civil service organizations "so I could keep information on events flowing, and connect the information with actors who could save lives," she said.

Her contacts from the RWPL, both inside the camps and outside, passed messages back and forth through Korir, providing tips on people, including the elderly, trapped inside houses in villages stricken by horrific violence.

"I networked with the security teams that I knew to go to locations and save the situation," Korir said. "Also, there were a lot of bodies that were not buried, and we networked to ensure the families had their dead buried with our accompaniment."

One young boy from a refugee camp drowned in a cattle dip; Korir organized a funeral and burial place. Word spread of such selfless actions, which helped Korir and her network win the confidence of the women and children trapped in the camps.

"There were many agencies providing food and dealing with the bigger picture, but they missed the issues that were key to target groups like women and girls," Korir explained. "We gave the victims space to cry, to tell their stories and relieve trauma. All these groups we organized at small corners within the camps at our own risk."

The women and girls told of being misused sexually by men in the camps, even by security personnel. Young women who had just delivered babies were not being well served and single mothers had no one to stand in line for them at the food distribution points. Through a radio program organized by Korir, people donated necessities to the women and children in the camps.

When the situation normalized somewhat, the women formed groups and met weekly to think about life after the camps, including making peace between the rival Kikuyu and Kalenjin tribes.

"I and other women in my network became bridges to take information back and forth from the community to the camps," Korir said, "until the Kikuyu women finally wished to meet the Kalenjin women they vowed never to meet."

The Norwegian Embassy in Kenya has taken a special interest in the heroics of Korir and the eight other women, and funded the documenting of their action that resulted in Walking the Talk, as well as the May 20 ceremony.

"I am humbled by the strength of these women in the face of the trauma and bloodletting the country faced," said Mr. Atle Leikuoll, deputy secretary general of Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as reported in the Daily Nation.

Even after the ceremony, Korir was shy to talk about her efforts, preferring instead to shine the spotlight on victims who need assistance. "I derive a lot of satisfaction when I do something small that touches other peoples' lives," Korir said. "The post-election violence situation was just one that needed my action."

Indonesia Presents Environmental Award to Wehea Rainforest Project

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

A rainforest protection project managed by DAI's Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP) has received the Kalpatura Award, Indonesia's highest environmental honor. A June 5 ceremony presenting the award was held at the presidential palace in Jakarta.

The honored project--The Nature Conservancy's Wehea site in Kalimantan--is part of a portfolio of sites under OCSP, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

OCSP implements policy reform, law enforcement, public outreach, and site-based conservation measures. Together, these activities reduce the widespread habitat destruction that threatens the remaining populations of wild orangutans at key sites in Borneo and Sumatra.

The indigenous Dayak people of Wehea and the local government of East Kutai District in Indonesian Borneo have made great strides in protecting and managing 38,000 hectares of rainforest from lowland to mountain. The forest is home to threatened species such as the Bornean orangutan, clouded leopard, and storm's stork. It is also an important water and medicinal plant source for the Wehea people and their agricultural livelihoods.

In addition, the Dayak tribe leader, Ledjie Tag, won the Kalpatura Environment Savior Award. "My responsibility for protecting the environment will not stop after receiving the award," said Ledjie, as reported in the Jakarta Post.

Under the Wehea project:

In cooperation with local people, the local government declared the area a protected forest in 2004.

Local and provincial governments contributed more than US$400,000 to its management. Such financial commitment from Indonesian governments to conservation is rare.

Community patrols succeeded in stopping virtually all illegal logging and hunting. Forest loss, which averaged 230 hectares per year in 2002 and 2003, has ceased.

The head of customary law, Mr. Let Djitaq, linked forest protection to the cultural revival of the Wehea people in that the community took ownership of the project and saw greater opportunities for development in general.

Village incomes have doubled due to improved agricultural practices. New agricultural systems for rubber, cocoa, betutu fish, fruits and vegetables, ironwood, gaharu (expensive aromatic wood), and greatly expanded nurseries have benefited local people.

Private firms provided $200,000 for infrastructure to support the program in 2008.

The area hosts 500 to 750 orangutans, or 1 to 2 percent of the remaining population in the world.

DAI's Hollenbach Addresses Global Health Council on Microfinancing Clean Water

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

It's no secret that washing germs down the drain is an effective way to prevent the spread of colds, flu, and diarrhea, yet in Indonesia more than 100,000 children age 5 and under die each year from dehydration due to diarrhea. Most simply do not have access to running water for handwashing.

Educational events have been staged throughout Indonesia's poorer areas to teach people the importance of handwashing with soap, but after event organizers pack up their handwashing equipment and leave, it can be difficult for local citizens--lacking such convenient hand-washing stations--to put into practice what they have learned.

"How many of these families have that huge jug of water with the fancy tap? In all likelihood, very few," said DAI's Allen Hollenbach. "But if you can bring running tap water into their front yard, they immediately have the ability to perform proper handwashing with soap, which is a critical step toward better health and hygiene."

By creating partnerships between microfinance institutions and water companies, DAI in the past two years has helped deliver clean running water to thousands of low-income Indonesian households. Hollenbach, environmental finance coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Environmental Services Program (ESP), explained the project during a May 30 panel session at the Global Health Council's 36th Annual International Conference in Washington, D.C.

The conference, which convened hundreds of experts on global health issues, was an unusual environment in which to discuss the technical aspects of microfinance, Hollenbach said. But it proved an excellent forum to illustrate how banks and water utilities can both profit by working together to solve crucial health issues, with banks growing their customer base and utilities expanding their services.

The DAI-led project has so far brokered 17 partnerships between water utilities and financing institutions, to include 11 different utilities and four banks.

"It's not rocket science but it is quite a bit of work," Hollenbach said. "A number of people commented afterward that the session stimulated their thinking on linkages between microfinance and health."

Though Indonesia has ample freshwater sources, many Indonesians do not have the $150 to $200 required up front to pay for a water connection to their home. The project has so far helped finance 7,000 new water connections. Loans are generally for one to two years, with a flat interest rate of 1 to 2 percent per month. Residents must provide basic qualification--proof of cash flow, official government identification, and a savings account--to be loaned the money.

ESP's broad objective is to promote better health through improved water resources management and expanded access to clean water and sanitation services, using four integrated technical components:

Watershed management and biodiversity conservation, which focuses on source-water protection and conservation in the upper watersheds;

Environmental service delivery, to improve the technical and operational performance of water utilities;

Environmental finance, including microfinance, which addresses the financing needs of the water sector; and

Crosscutting health communications, to promote behavioral change.

Journalists Honored at Internews Event Cosponsored by DAI

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST

More responsive governments, a healthier and cleaner environment, and basic human security are just a few of the development objectives better served by a press that is free to disseminate information and speak its mind.

This core belief, and an appreciation for journalists who work under repressive conditions, led DAI to cosponsor last night's Internews Media Leadership Awards in Washington, D.C.

Internews is an international development organization dedicated to empowering local media. The awardees--James Nachtwey, Tasneem Ahmar, Thepchai Yong, and the Haitian radio network RAMAK--have labored to give voice to the world's underdogs and to address injustice, often while working against the power structures in the societies where they operate.

"The awardees' work, and the humility with which they accepted their awards, made quite an impression," said Dr. Ann Hudock, Managing Director of DAI's Governance Sector, who represented DAI at the gala. "Their commitment to press freedom in very difficult situations is inspiring."

The four awardees have touched lives all over the world:

James Nachtwey, one of his generation's most acclaimed photojournalists, has photographed more than 25 armed conflicts since 1981 and cast light on dozens of critical social issues;

Tasneem Ahmar of Islamabad launched the Uks Research Center in 1997 to focus on women and media in Pakistan, a country where fewer than 5 percent of journalists are women, and to sensitize media on how to provide balanced reporting on issues concerning women and human rights;

Thepchai Yong oversees the Thai Public Broadcasting Service, Thailand's first independent public broadcaster, recognized for its wide range of thought-provoking and knowledgeable programs and commitment to quality and integrity; and

RAMAK, represented Tuesday by the network's coordinator general, Jean Fedner Chery, operates 41 community radio stations across Haiti, most of them based in rural areas and run by volunteers, focusing on local programming and raising issues such as gender-based violence, migration, children's rights, HIV/AIDS, the environment, and civic education.

Internews used the occasion of the ceremony--hosted by broadcaster Bob Edwards--to drive home its argument that expanding people's access to information empowers them to change the world for the better, especially in crisis situations.

"Internews made a compelling case for how media is used in the aftermath of humanitarian disasters, both to communicate with affected populations about relief and security efforts and to introduce a sense of normalcy by programming topics of interest," said Jenny Baker, a senior new business manager for DAI's Governance Sector, who also attended the event.

Various DAI programs incorporate media components, including support for a free press. Most recently, DAI helped to launch the first center for investigative journalism in Bangladesh under the Promoting Governance, Accountability, Transparency and Integrity Project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

DAI Helps Launch Anticorruption Book in Serbia

Fri, 29 May 2009 12:00:00 EST

In Corrupt Cities, authors Robert Klitgaard, Ronald MacLean-Abaroa, and H. Lindsey Parris focus on the economic costs of corruption rather than its moral dimension as the driving force behind anti-corruption efforts.

"Even though corruption is a subject of passionate opinion and ethical freight," they write, "preventing it requires as coldly calculated strategy as any other major innovation in a city's policy or management."

The Serbian edition of Corrupt Cities (World Bank Publications, 2000) was launched at a May 22 conference in Belgrade, "Cities without Corruption: Cities with a Future," organized by the Development Consulting Group (DCG). Coauthor MacLean-Abaroa, a Bolivian politician and international authority on anti-corruption programs, was the honored guest.

"Today's [civic leaders] must meet a multitude of objectives," MacLean-Abaroa contends. "They must provide services. They must empower citizens. They must work with the private sector in collegial relationships."

"Tackling corruption in the right ways can be a means toward those broader goals."

The conference was a part of the larger Regional Anticorruption Initiative that DCG started in 2007 with support from DAI; the Open Society Institute, Budapest; Partners Foundation for Local Development (FPDL), Romania; and the World Bank Institute. DAI in 2007 helped launch Corrupt Cities in Macedonia.

The regional initiative addresses corruption at the local level and includes the translation of Corrupt Cities into Macedonian, Albanian, and Serbian. It also makes available the "Restore the Health of Your Organization" toolkit, published by FPDL Romania and UN-HABITAT, and pilots this bottom-up approach to preventing corruption in local governments in Serbia.

The May 22 conference focused on developing local anticorruption initiatives to eliminate patronage, red tape, ineffective revenue-generating agencies, bribery in procurement, and failure to deliver services to city dwellers. The conference panel featured the state secretary in Serbia's Ministry of Public Administration and Local Government, the World Bank's country manager for Serbia, the president of Serbia's Anti-Corruption Council, the executive director of Transparency Serbia, and Serbian mayors.

Mr. MacLean-Abaroa the first democratically elected Mayor of La Paz, who was reelected four times and became a founding member of Transparency International, drew on first-hand experience in describing mechanisms he used to prevent and cure corruption in Bolivia's capital.

Other best practice anticorruption mechanisms presented at the conference included System 48 in the municipality of Indjija and E-Procurement software piloted by DCG in Vracar, a municipality of Belgrade. System 48 was introduced to Indjija by DAI under the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Serbia Local Government Reform Program.

Panel Scrutinizes How to Measure Success in Public-Private Partnerships

Fri, 22 May 2009 12:00:00 EST

Why would someone buy a hybrid car? Thats easy doing so would save money through better gas mileage, a result easily measured in dollars and cents. But driving a hybrid also reduces a motorists carbon footprint, another quality result but one not so easily measured.

Such is the challenge of measuring results in development initiatives. Donors and implementers can measure quantity, such as jobs created, or quality, such as attitudes changed, or they can measure both. They can also measure compliance whether a project is run by the book, providing the required forms and filings accurately and on time.

In public-private partnerships and other multidonor initiatives, measuring success can be more complicated because additional stakeholders often result in more and different metrics for success. Corporations, for example, might have different goals from nonprofit organizations, while the project's beneficiaries might have altogether different concerns.

A lively panel discussion on Wednesday Impact is Everything: Measuring Results of Multi-Donor Initiatives strove to bring the diverse parties involved in multidonor projects onto the same page. The event was hosted by the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and organized with help from DAI.

The expert panelists, speaking before a group of approximately 70 development professionals, succeeded in boiling down the many metrics of success into a few important points.

People value outcomes, not activities, said panelist Jason Saul, noting that although multidonor projects have numerous stakeholders, the projects goals can be designed and simplified to make everyone happy.

Set your intentions immediately, he said. Measurement happens at the beginning of a project. Find out what the stakeholders want. What is a win in their eyes?

Saul, the CEO of Chicago-based Mission Measurement and a leading expert on strategy and performance measurement in the social sector, was joined on the panel by Marianne Siemietkowski Needham, of the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute, and Howard Buffett, of the White House Office of Social Innovation. Robert Schneider of USAIDs Global Development Alliance (GDA) moderated. DAI provides strategic support to the GDA.

Needhams group strives to partner with local public and private sector organizations to foster entrepreneurship around the world.

Cisco believes that entrepreneurs are really agents for change, she said, adding that Cisco principally targets entrepreneurs of small and medium businesses in emerging countries.

Quantifiable outcomes, such as improvement to a countrys Ease of Doing Business indicator, as calculated by the World Bank, are helpful metrics, Needham said, but success stories and testimonials are also effective ways to demonstrate the effectiveness of projects. She said her company has a team dedicated to collecting and archiving such stories.

The Obama administration, Buffett said, made innovation a buzzword in its approach toward good governing, to include the encouragement of public-private partnerships in order to solve our nations greatest problems.

An all-hands-on-deck approach, seeking new solutions to old problems, investing in what works, and empowering individuals to enact change are guiding principles within Buffetts office.

Several audience members posed questions to the panelists. Among them: What makes a good partnership, how does one measure systemic change, or measure outcomes that occur specifically due to a partnership modality?

Setting a reasonable outcome is the biggest challenge because we all want to dream, to put that stake in the ground, Saul said. He recommended setting metrics that are both relevant to the outcome and practical enough to be easily and accurately measured.

You want reasonable indicators; ones that can tell a story that is compelling, Saul said.

The panel was part of the two-day Metrics from the Ground Up workshop, hosted by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs and the Grassroots Business Fund.

DAI Earns Place in Washington Technology Top 100, The Washington Post Post 200

Mon, 11 May 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI has earned a place in the Washington Technology Top 100, the print and online magazines annual ranking of largest government contractors according to prime contracting revenue in government fiscal year 2008.

The ranking is based on expenditures related to information technology products and services, systems integration, telecommunications, professional services, and engineering services, and is published in Washington Technologys May 2009 issue.

The issue includes an interview article titled DAI Turns Dreams into Reality, in which DAI spokesperson Steven OConnor discusses the mission of the company, the core capabilities needed to excel in the international development arena, and the critical role technology plays for DAI in connecting people to one another, to ideas, and to information.

To view the Washington Technology Top 100, click here.

DAI was also featured in The Washington Post Post 200, a guide to the regions largest businesses, published May 13. The section profiles 200 companies, including public and private companies, nonprofits, banks and credit unions, universities, sports teams, foreign firms with headquarters in the Washington area, law and lobby firms, and major employers.

To view The Washington Post Post 200, click here.

Spring Issue of Developments Newsletter Now Available

Mon, 11 May 2009 12:00:00 EST

The spring issue of DAIs Developments newsletter is now available.

Like many of the articles in the new issue, our lead storyon the Indonesia Environmental Services Program (ESP)is a story of integrated programming and the development benefits to be won through a carefully orchestrated multisectoral approach.

In the case of ESP, Walter Weaver and Reed Merrill show how the program is using water as a thread that ties together health, sanitation, hygiene, education, governance, climate change, and ecosystem conservation, all within a context of improving livelihoods. Weaver and Merrill relate how ESP has responded to its diverse funding sources (congressional earmarks for biodiversity, water and sanitation, and child survival and health) by conceiving a holistic program that engages an unusually broad spectrum of partners.

This theme is taken up by the authors of Up to Our Ears: Effective Programming with Multiple Earmarks. Lief Doerring, Paul Dodds, Del McCluskey, and Andrew Watson explore how the Cambodia Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise project has managed to turn the potentially disruptive nature of disparate funding sources into an asset: Incorporating multiple mission-level objectives down to the project level, they write, provides implementers with the right incentives to achieve the fully integrated cross-sectoral impactthat a more typical stove-piped approach may lack.

Jerry Martin, Managing Director of DAIs new Health sector, makes a similar point in his timely article, One World, One Health. Martin depicts DAIs holistic, multisectoral approach as crucial in a health context where the boundaries between countries are meaningless, the distinction between human and animal health is increasingly blurred, and the need for collaboration among human health specialists, veterinarians, wildlife experts, agriculturalists, and public health officials is imperative.

Among the other articles in this issue:

Bronwen Morrison, Brigadier General (Ret.) Russ Howard, and Dan Leff describe how DAI is synthesizing the full range of DAI assets to help the U.S. Military respond to its stability operations mandate and play its role in the integrated 3D approach to foreign policy;

Bagie Sherchand explains how a social fence in Malawis Nyika national park has enabled people to reclaim their ancestral heritage, promoted sustainable livelihoods and food security, mitigated climate change, and protected a precious natural resource; and

Chuck Coon and Paul Goodman report on the U.S. Agency for International Developments Development 2.0 Challenge and the prospects for technologyespecially mobile technologyto make a difference in peoples lives.

In his CEOs Desk column, President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Boomgard outlines his conception of DAIs enduring mission and values, and situates some of DAIs recent initiativesthe push into new technical areas, such as energy and climate change, health, rule of law, and stability; the launch of DAI Jordan and exploration of other high-priority geographies; and the funding of The Development Practitioners Forumwithin the context of those values and what he calls DAIs 39-year stretch.

Finally, in the DAIdeas publication that accompanies this issue, Kristina Kohler, Nemat Guenena, and Jeremy Hagger discuss efforts to build strategic value networks in the water sector and bring new actors, fresh perspectives, and additional resources to the worlds pressing water problems.

To view Developments online, click here. To view DAIdeas, click here. For print copies or to be added to our mailing list, contact Marcia Liu.

Global Development Commons Staff Nominated for Service to America Medal

Fri, 08 May 2009 12:00:00 EST

The Global Development Commons (GDC) team from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Wednesday was named a finalist to receive a 2009 Service to America Medal from the Partnership for Public Service. DAI provides strategic support to the GDC.

Led by Karen Turner, director of USAID's Office of Development Partners, the GDC team is one of four finalists in the National Security and International Affairs category. The winner will be announced in September.

The teamwhich includes USAID staffers Wesley Wilson, Will Schmitt, Hanna Jung, and Judy Lightwas cited for leading USAIDs first-ever crowdsourcing initiative, the USAID Development 2.0 Challenge, a worldwide call for ideas on how to use mobile phones to address international aid efforts in the field.

The Challenge attracted more than 100 submissions. The top three entries are expanding ways to use SMS and open source platforms to improve child malnutrition surveillance, deliver medical diagnoses to remote locations, and use crowdsourcing during crises to circulate emergency information and reports of violence.

USAID is advising the winners and a number of the other entrants on how to sustainably enhance scale.

The Partnership for Public Service is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to revitalize the federal government by inspiring a new generation to serve, and by transforming the way government works. This year it received nominations for nearly 400 federal employees in eight categories. Approximately 30 finalists were announced during Wednesdays event at the Hart Senate Building in Washington, D.C.

Also nominated in the National Security and International Affairs category is USAIDs Amy Meyer, who runs the agency's economic growth program in Pakistan. Meyer arrived in Pakistan in 2006. With only one staff member, she began to develop a strategy to tackle numerous challenges facing that country, including in agriculture, energy, and entrepreneurship.

First Center for Investigative Journalism in Bangladesh Launched

Thu, 07 May 2009 12:00:00 EST

Bangladesh's newly elected leaders have vowed to root out corruption from all levels of government. To that end, the first center for investigative journalism in Bangladesh was launched today to help journalists achieve international standards and professional excellence in their work to inform citizens and enlighten public discourse.

The center, named the Journalism Training & Research Initiative (JATRI), is a program of the Promoting Governance, Accountability, Transparency and Integrity (PROGATI) project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by DAI. It is hosted by the Institute for Governance Studies at BRAC University in Dhaka.

JATRI trains journalists on investigative techniques for print and broadcast media, multimedia reporting and storytelling, and journalistic ethics and standards. The center also researches issues that affect professional practices and public affairsissues that in turn affect readers and viewers.

The center will award fellowships to enterprising young journalists with innovative research proposals, including follow-on placement in mainstream media operations. Its library of newspapers, journals, books, and magazines for journalists will include a digital archive to facilitate reporters access to documents.

Todays launch ceremony was attended by USAID Mission Director Denise Rollins; Bangladeshs Minister of Information and Cultural Affairs, the Honorable Abul Kalam Azad; Motiur Rahman, the editor of Daily Prothom Alo, the largest circulation newspaper in Bangladesh; and the Vice Chancellor of BRAC University, Professor Jamilur Reza Choudhury. The 100 invited guests included representatives of media outlets and civil society organizations, and Bangladesh government officials.

Even before todays formal opening ceremony, JATRI has been at work. Indeed, Mr. Azad opened the ceremony by presenting certificates to 30 Bangladeshi journalists who have just completed JATRIs first training, Investigative Journalism Techniques for Broadcast Journalists.

The minister took the opportunity of the JATRI launch to discuss the Bangladesh governments recent adoption of a Right to Information law, which offers access to government documents and information on policy decisions. Given this new openness, he observed, it is especially important for journalists to conduct their work professionally.

In their remarks, Mr. Rahman assessed the training needs of Bangladesh's media sector and offered support to JATRI, while Ms. Rollins emphasized the link between a strong media sector and the U.S. Governments support to help Bangladesh strengthen governance and fight corruption. A robust, professional media promotes transparent and accountable government, she said.

Finally, BRACs Professor Choudhury highlighted the role of journalists in promoting the public interest, reporting facts, and making complex issues understandable to the general public.

Palestinian Market Development Initiative Marks Successful First Year of Operations

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Under the patronage of Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad, the United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank recently celebrated the first anniversary of the Palestinian Facility for New Market Development (FNMD).

More than 250 peopleincluding Palestinian business community leaders, FNMD clients and service providers, donors, and media representativesattended the April 15 event at the Best Eastern Hotel in Ramallah. The event included addresses from Dr. Fayyad; Helen Winterton, Head of Office for DFIDs Palestinian Programme; and Ritva Reinikka, director of the World Banks Social and Economic Development Group, Middle East and North Africa.

In its first year, the DAI-managed FNMD has supported 120 companies from the West Bank and Gaza and facilitated numerous business success stories. The project provides grants that help Palestinian companies enter new markets and develop new products.

We are here to celebrate the ingenuity, skills and resilience of the businesses the project has supported, Ms. Winterton said.

The FNMD client portfolio includes businesses from sectors including manufacturing, agribusiness, stone and marble, tourism, information and communication technology, and handicrafts. The project supports mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, including many young companies with promising ideas on how to grow their businesses.

Eight companies supported by FNMD have started to export to new international markets in the Arab region, Asia, Europe and Africa; several are improving their existing products and pursuing local and international quality certificates; and 15 companies are developing new, innovative goods and services.

At the event, for example, Mr. Fayez Joulani of Eagleflex in Hebron presented his companys new product development plans for grinding tools designed with an eye to the international market. Dr. Samer Mayaleh of PITS in Nablus announced that his company has upgraded its electronic vehicle tracking system, and that the improved product is proving very popular in the local market. Mr. Mujtaba Tbeleh of Nablus Soap Factory discussed his experience of going for the first time to an international trade showwith FNMD support, he has updated his soap design and packaging and is now selling in new markets, including Yemen and Norway.

Prime Minister Fayyad, Ms. Reinikka, and British Consul General for Jerusalem Richard Makepeace brought the event to a close by awarding grant certificates to six new FNMD clients from West Bank and Gaza.

For more information on FNMD, visit the project's website, www.fnmd.ps.

Cornell University Fund Launched in Memory of DAI Cofounder, Charles F. Sweet

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Upon graduating from Cornell University in 1964, young Charles F. Sweet traveled to Vietnam through the International Voluntary Service, thus embarking on a career dedicated to helping less fortunate peoplea career that included his cofounding of DAI in 1970.

But Charlie Sweet, who died on March 30 at age 66 in Pensacola, Florida, remained close all his life to Cornell, where his father was a professor. Now he will have a legacy there.

Those wishing to make memorial gifts in Mr. Sweets name can send donations to the Charles F. Sweet Fund at the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development, care of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Development Office, 274 Roberts Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853. His family has planned a summer ceremony to spread Charlies ashes on Cornell farm property. Private services have also been scheduled.

Mr. Sweet returned from Vietnam in 1968 to work in the Johnson White House and subsequently in the State Department. After earning a masters degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 1970, he cofounded DAI and helped build the company before retiring in 1991. He later became an adjunct professor at James Madison University.

Mr. Sweet was born in Lowville, New York, on the outskirts of the Adirondack Park, the son of Harold B. and Elizabeth M. Sweet. He is survived by his sister, Charlotte S. Guyer, and her husband, George W. Scott, Jr. of Keene, New Hampshire; his sister, Margaret A. Bakker, and her husband, Peter M. Bakker, of Barkhamsted, Connecticut; and his brother, Robert E. Sweet, and his wife, Amy K. Sweet, of Saranac Lake, New York, as well as by six nieces and nephews, a grandniece, and three grandnephews. He is also survived by many good friends, including Dr. S. Ivan Riley, Jr., David A. Lunden, and Sylvia R. Stephens, with whom he lived in Florida.

Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Week Concludes with Call to Action

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Participants at an Anti-Corruption Week seminar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, listened as journalists described how newspapers and other free media hold accountable those who hold power.

At another roundtable they learned that 70 percent of critical audits in recent decades by Bangladeshs Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)more than 1,000 in allwere filed with the countrys Public Accounts Committee (PAC) but not acted upon, even as corruption ran unchecked.

Both days events prompted coverage in the countrys press. Unless the PAC is made effective, the [CAGs] office will not be able to function as a watchdog agency and thus corruption will not be prevented, said M. Hafizuddin Khan, a former CAG and advisor to Bangladeshs caretaker government, as reported by Bangladeshs Daily Star.

Bangladesh is one of the worlds poorest countries, and with 162 million people packed into an area slightly smaller than the state of Illinois, one of the most densely populated. The country has suffered from extensive corruption, institutional breakdowns, and political violence. But newly elected leaders vow to root out corruption from all levels of government.

Under the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Promoting Governance, Accountability, Transparency, and Integrity (PROGATI) project, DAI is working toward that goal by organizing events such as Anti-Corruption Week, which concluded March 29.

At the end of the weeklong program, Bangladeshis from the government, private sector, and civil society shared lessons from the 13th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Athens, Greece, which they attended under PROGATIs sponsorship. Among the topics: the private sectors role in preventing corruption, overeeing new climate change funding, and reforming public procurement. The chairman of Bangladeshs Anti-Corruption Commission closed the week with an inspiring call to action.

PROGATIs anti-corruption programming includes creating a center for investigative journalism, supporting coalitions and watchdog organizations, strengthening the comptroller and auditor general functions, and creating a parliamentary budget analysis unit.

Veterinary Epidemiology Students Query DAI Expert on Challenges in the Field

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Development practitioners know that projects rarely go exactly as planned; one must constantly adapt to realities on the ground.

At the field level, veterinary epidemiology really is an art, as opposed to application of theory, said Dr. Gary Mullins, who earlier this month presented Epidemiology at the Ground Level: 20 Years of Chasing Disease in Africa to veterinary students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The students expressed great interest during Mullins lecture about the difficultiesand adventuresencountered while implementing veterinary epidemiology projects in remote areas of Africa. Mullins explained, for example, that eliminating animal diseases sometimes necessitates destroying large numbers of animals in order to protect the national herd or a countrys trade status. This difficult process is often compounded by a lack of financial and human resources, and also by political backlash and cultural resistance to such a decision, even though it would be beneficial in the long term.

Money is of less value than animals to many people in the developing world, Mullins explained to the students. Telling people that their animals must be destroyed in order to save the national herd is a difficult message to get across and, understandably, is often met with great resistance.

The students were intrigued by the realities of this aspect of veterinary science, he added. They were interested in why a farmer might not be more cooperative, and why they would run away with their sick animals or disperse them among relatives.

Mullins, a Technical Area Manager in DAIs Health Sector, oversees DAI's zoonotic disease prevention and control activities in Africa and works on the Community-Based Avian Influenza Control Project in Indonesia. He was invited to lecture at Virginia Tech by Dr. Francois Elvinger, Professor of Epidemiology and Production Management Medicine in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences.

In his lecture, Mullins emphasized the socioeconomic ramifications of animal health and disease control, which reach far beyond elimination of the disease itself. Child nutritional status has been shown to be adversely affected when milk or other protein sources are removed from a community, for example, while jobs and livelihoods are lost when animals die or are destroyed, often prompting the forced migration of newly unemployed and hungry people, some never to return to farming.

Mullins, also a technical advisor on DAIs Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) project, said when a disease is less visibly apparent, such as lung disease in cattle, it is difficult for a farmer to comprehend and accept drastic measures. But when animals are noticeably sick and dying, such as chickens infected or killed by avian influenza, it is somewhat easier to convince farmers of the need to cull the flock. Still, the general lack of resources for monetary compensation makes it difficult to obtain farmer compliance.

Mullins, who has also been an external lecturer at universities in Kenya, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, looks forward to returning to Virginia Tech to share his hands-on experience.

In academia, I dont think the nuances or realities of field work are extensively discussed, but its an important part of a veterinary students education, Mullins said. Thats why I hope to continue collaborating with Dr. Elvinger and others in the academic community to help bridge the gap between knowledge and application, or as its been called, the know-do gap.

Panelists Seek to Inject Innovation into Government

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

The U.S. Government and innovationfor many, the two simply do not go together. By necessity, government agencies must play it safe with taxpayers money and speak with one voice. Innovators, on the other hand, take risks, welcome dissent, and embrace the lessons of failure.

How do you square that circlebe open to other ideas, yet with the discipline to speak as one State Department? asked Dr. Jeremy Curtin, coordinator of the International Information Program at the State Department, and one of five panelists at the seminar, Open Innovation for Government: Answering President Obama's Call for More Open, Effective Public Service.

The panelists led the April 14 discussion, co-sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development's Global Development Commons, before approximately 80 guests at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, and were joined by an online streaming video to a worldwide audience who emailed questions into the room.

The Obama administration, which has called for the federal government to be more collaborative, transparent, and participatory, was represented by Dr. Beth Noveck, leader of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policys open government initiative.

To fail with a start-up company, Noveck noted, is worn like a badge of honor in innovation hubs such as Silicon Valley in California. In government, though, the fear of failure blocks innovation, she said, and the security-clearance culture precludes open exchanges with outsiders.

That said, the internet is changing the dynamic of the clearance culture, several participants noted, since information there is open to all. It starts with a change in attitude, in trusting and believing in the expertise and experience [of those outside government], Noveck said.

Moderator Dr. Karin von Hippel, co-director of CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project; Doug Comstock, director of NASAs Innovative Partnership Program; and Karen Turner, director of USAID's Office of Development Partners, and acting director of the Global Development Commons, completed the panel.

Turner extolled the robust response to the USAID Development 2.0 Challenge, when in the fall of 2008 more than 100 innovators submitted ideas for using mobile phones to solve international development problems. The top three entries are now expanding ways to use SMS and open source platforms to improve child malnutrition surveillance, deliver medical diagnoses to remote locations, and use crowd-sourcing during crises to circulate reports of violence and emergency information.

Technology, others noted, only reaches so far, prompting Curtin to refer to development challenges in places such as Afghanistan. Outside of [Kabul], you have important people, but who do not have electricity or are not literate, Curtin said. Individual solutions have to be found in individual countries. New technology and new media is not the answer to everything.

Turner agreed on technologys limitations: The Global Development Commons is about all innovation that delivers better development.

The Global Development Commons (GDC) promotes innovation in international development through knowledge sharing, partnerships, and collaborative decision making. DAI strategically supports and advises the GDC through USAIDs Global Development Alliance (GDA), to which DAI provides core services. The GDA builds innovative and sustainable partnerships to improve the scale and impact of international development work.

The GDC team also created and maintains GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net, a website built on an open source platform that highlights innovations that improve development projects. It was developed by DAIs information and communications technology team.

Columbia Students Save Health Agency at DAI-Cosponsored Event

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Disaster was looming as the states Health and Human Services Departments new medical claims processing system faltered upon launch. Claims from hospitals were not being processed by the HHS, which in turn was not reimbursing doctors and hospitals for their work. Political pressure was mounting for the agency to fix the problem.

Enter Aurora Cardenas of Peru, Chelsea Gorr of Australia, and Garrett Wright of the United States, whose solution to the hypothetical problem earned them victory on April 10 at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs Public Policy Case Competition, held in New York and cosponsored by DAI.

DAIs Steven Rozner, Deputy Chief of Party on the Fiscal Reform and Economic Governance project, served as one of the judges, alongside public policy specialists from Deloitte Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Oliver Wyman, Dalberg Global Development Advisors, and McKinsey & Company.

Cardenas and Goor, each working toward master of public affairs degrees, and Wright, a master of international affairs candidate, devised their plan in five hours. Their approach to the problem was to build momentum with quick wins (augmenting staff, communicating with stakeholders, and increasing technical support), redefine the vision for an efficient claims system, and build sustainability into their solution.

The team conceived an objective, with explicit assumptions, deducing that the HHS problems were self-reinforcing; proposed a root cause analysis; recommended a project director be assigned at HHS; and drafted a 90-day timeline. They established metrics to measure success and acknowledged short- and long-term risks and constraints.

The winning team stood out because of the comprehensiveness of their proposal, and because of their attention to details, such as getting at root causes, sustainability, and thoughtful metrics for measuring results, Rozner said.

The event was extremely well organized and the students were sharp; they showed real grace under pressure. The voting was far from unanimous.

AMARTA Wins Positive Coverage in Indonesian Media

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Media Perkebunan, an Indonesian monthly magazine targeting the agribusiness community, in its March issue published a 10-page article covering DAI's Agribusiness Market and Support Activity, and featuring a cover photo of AMARTA Chief of Party David Anderson.

AMARTA was also featured in the April 4 edition of the Jakarta Post.

The Media Perkebunan article, titled "USAID - AMARTA Program Helping Indonesian Farmers," was written by editor-in-chief Risrizal Sikumbang, and focused on success stories in the cocoa, biofuels, and rubber value chains.

"Media Perkebunan considered AMARTA's program in Indonesia successful in empowering farmers," the article stated in its opening paragraphs. "AMARTA's program had provided significant contribution to creation of work opportunities, economic growth and farmers' welfare."

Anderson explained in the article that AMARTA was designed as a comprehensive program encompassing both on-farm and off-farm activities, evaluating every part of the agribusiness value chain, and measuring its achievements against set indicators.

The Jakarta Post article reported on residents of the Agimuga District in Mimika, Papua, who are now growing rice more profitably under the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded program, and how the salable rice complements the potatoes and carrots they grow for sustenance.

OCSP Orangutan Discovery Excites Interest Worldwide

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

A survey team from DAIs Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP) recently discovered a hitherto unknown population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Borneo, generating publicity around the world on the plight of the endangered great apes.

The team, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and led by DAI subcontractor Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist for The Nature Conservancy, were surveying forests nestled between jagged, limestone cliffs on the eastern edge of Borneo island, where they counted 219 orangutan nests, indicating a substantial number of the animals.

An Associated Press (AP) story on the discovery was filed April 12 and published in newspapers and on news websites worldwide, including in Poland, Spain, South Africa, and India. The UPI and AFP wire services also filed stories, as did the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, MSNBC, and the BBC.

Meijaard said the discovery suggests the presence of at least several hundred of the tree-dwelling apes, and perhaps as many as 1,000 to 2,000. An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans remain in the wild, mostly on Borneo, with 90 percent in the Indonesian portion of the island and the rest in neighboring Malaysia.

Orangutans have been forced to seek refuge in the sections of Borneos rainforest that have not been clear-cut by commercial logging or burned to make way for palm oil plantations. Meijaard said the steep topography, poor soil, and general inaccessibility of the rugged mountains appear to have deterred developers from entering the area where the orangutans were discovered, at least for now.

But the areas trees include those highly sought after for commercial timber, Meijaard added.

Birute Mary Galdikas, a Canadian scientist who has spent nearly four decades studying orangutans in the wild, told the AP that most of the remaining populations are small and scattered, making them especially vulnerable to extinction.

"So yes, finding a population that science did not know about is significant, especially one of this size," she told the AP, noting that those found on the eastern part of the island, or East Kalimantan, represent a rare subspecies, the black Borneon orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus morio).

Paul Hartman, Chief of Party of the Jakarta-based OCSP, noted that Indonesia and Malaysia are among the worlds leading producers of palm oil, which is used in food and cosmetics, and also to meet growing demands for clean-burning fuels. OCSP is working at local, regional, and national levels to reduce habitat destruction that threatens the remaining orangutan populations. The efforts include policy reform, law enforcement, public outreach, and site-based conservation measures.

OCSP also recently undertook surveys of an area in North Sumatra called Phakpak Bharat, where it found another previously unknown population of orangutans. As in East Kalimantan, the population size has not been ascertained but is thought to be in the hundreds, Hartman said, which is significant given that the total population remaining in Sumatra has been estimated at less than 7,000, thus classifying the Sumatran orangutan as critically endangered.

While there are big challenges, there is still hope to save this species, Hartman said. Understandably, we hear lots of gloom and doom scenarios about the fate of orangutans. As a result, people might start asking themselves, 'What's the point if things are so dire?'

That we are still finding new populations indicates that we still have a chance to save this animal if its habitat can be protected. There is more than a glimmer of hope.

Neither of the discovery areas in Kalimantan and Sumatra are national parks, which would protect the habitat. Hartman stated that no matter what the land status, the areas should be managed to ensure there is sufficient forest habitat to sustain the orangutan population.

Congressmen Visit Ethiopia Urban Gardens Project

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Two congressmen this week toured a DAI project that assists Ethiopian families affected by HIV/AIDS to grow their own food for sustenance and income.

Reps. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., and Ben Chandler, D-Ky., visited the Urban Gardens for HIV-Affected Women and Children project in Addis Ababa, accompanied by staff from the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D.-Cal., Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Chief of Party Nancy Russell (center) with the visiting congressmen.

DAI's Nancy Russell, Chief of Party for the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded project, said the congressmen were pleased that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is expanding beyond a purely medical approach to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, and commented that support of such projects under PEPFAR is essential.

Carnahan is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and its International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight Subcommittee; Chandler is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and its State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee.

At the worksite visited on Wednesday, a team of 32 women who are caregivers for HIV\AIDS orphans, and some of whom are infected themselves, use low-maintenance irrigation drip-kits to grow vegetables such as kale, spinach, and carrots on previously vacant, garbage-strewn lots—land reclaimed or donated by the local government office. Each plot measures approximately 900 square meters. DAI provides guidance in establishing and maintaining the gardens.

The women have also formed self-help and savings groups, and have saved enough money to pay the monthly water bill and to help some of the members start kiosks to sell their vegetables.

The Urban Gardens initiative is projected to serve 24,000 new households with irrigation drip-kits and technical assistance over the next two years, reaching 84,000 women, orphans, and vulnerable children.

DAIs Doyle Named Co-Chair of SID-Washington's Energy and Infrastructure Group

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Patrick Doyle, DAIs Technical Area Manager for Energy and Climate Change, has been appointed co-chair of the Energy and Infrastructure Working Group at the Washington chapter of the Society for International Development (SID).

In this role, Mr. Doyle will organize and moderate expert panels to discuss topics such as renewable generation, energy and water efficiency, and carbon policy.

Mr. Doyle has worked for 13 years on energy and climate change issues, including industry experience with independent power producers and distributed generation companies. He has provided technology, market, and financial analysis and investment advice for alternative energy power and fuel projects for numerous clients.

SID is a global network of individuals and institutions concerned with participatory, pluralistic, and sustainable development. SID has more than 3,000 members in 80 countries and 45 local chapters.

DAI Thanks Friends and Partners for Decades of Collaboration in Haiti

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI yesterday hosted an evening of celebration at the Hotel Montana in Port au Prince to thank the many clients, partners, project staff, and friends who have collaborated with us over more than 30 years to make possible our work in Haiti.

DAI has been working in Haiti on and off since 1975, but this year is the company's fifteenth year of continuous engagement in Haiti's economic and social development. President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Boomgard marked the occasion by presenting a donation to Garry Delice, Director of the Haitian Education & Leadership Program (HELP) — a scholarship that will fund a full four-year university education for a Haitian student.

Some 250 guests attended the event, including staff from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors, many current and former project employees, representatives from Haiti's private sector, and partners in the nongovernmental organization and contractor community. High-profile attendees included U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson, USAID/Haiti Mission Director Beth Cypser and Acting Deputy Director Alex Deprez, and Sinior Raymond, Director General of ACME and President of ANIMH, the national association of microfinance institutions. Mr. Raymond made a special presentation to Jim Boomgard and Robert Dressen — DAI's Senior Vice President for Project Management and a veteran of DAI finance projects in Haiti — to recognize the company's sustained contribution to the emergence of microfinance in the country.

DAI's first assignment in Haiti was to analyze an integrated agricultural development project. Since then, we have undertaken more than 30 assignments, including nine major long-term programs. We began the 1980s by training small farmers how to manage credit cooperatives, an exercise that led us into implementing the six-year Strengthening Rural Credit Services Project, a USAID-funded effort to support upgrades in the Bureau de Credit Agricole. In 1994, even as UN peacekeepers conducted stability operations in the country, DAI's financial services team was asked to audit the Central Bank of Haiti.

Shortly thereafter, we launched that part of USAID's Program for the Recovery of the Economy designed to assist microenterprises and build microfinance services. The Promoting Economic Modernization project, another USAID effort, led five private sector groups through institutional renovations in the late 1990s.

In this decade, we have continued to expand access to financial services through the Financial Service Network for Entrepreneurs and the ongoing Support to Haiti's Microfinance, Small, and Medium Enterprises Sector — the culmination of a sustained commitment to microfinance that is one of the great success stories in Haitian development. We also continue to build the capacity of Haitian agriculture to operate in commercially and environmentally sustainable ways.

Today, Haiti DEED ( Développement Economique pour un Environnement Durable) is building on the legacy of the Hillside Agriculture Program and the Hurricane Jeanne Reconstruction Project to improve the management of land and other natural resources while expanding enterprise and job opportunities.

DAI Cofounder Charles F. Sweet Dies

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Charles F. Sweet, whose experiences in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War stoked his passion for helping less fortunate people and which led in 1970 to his cofounding of DAI died on Monday. He was 66 years old.

"Everyone at DAI is deeply saddened by the news of Charlie's death," said DAI President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Boomgard. "At heart, Charlie was a development guy: he wanted to make a difference in the world, and he succeeded in doing exactly that. Much of DAI's success is due to the principles he laid down in our earliest days. He will be missed by all who knew him."

While attending Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Charlie Sweet met two other students who had returned from Vietnam, Don Mickelwait and John Buck. The three men concluded that they should use what they had learned in school, and especially what they had learned away from school, to rethink development and how we go about working with impoverished people to improve their lives.

"Charlie always had, from day one, the heart that still beats inside of DAI today," David Gunning, DAI's board chairman, told DAI employees during a staff meeting in September.

Further information on Charlie Sweet, including information on memorial services, will be posted on this site when it becomes available.

DAIs Steve Rozner Addresses Crude Oil Taxation in USAID Seminar

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

Noting that an effective fiscal system has to balance risk and reward to attract investment, while also ensuring benefits for the host country, DAIs Steven Rozner presented Taxing Oil: Issues and Trends on March 23 at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The seminar provided an overview of key issues and trends in the taxation of crude oil extraction. While oil operations are commonly subject to a number of levies that fall under the governments general powers of taxationsuch as import and export duties, excises, and value-added taxRozner addressed the fiscal arrangements designed to tax the rents, or above-normal returns, from crude oil extraction.

The main instruments used by governments to secure revenues from oil projects include royalties, income taxes, and resource rent taxes, as well as non-tax arrangements such as production sharing and equity participation, often through the national oil company.

For a number of developing countries, oil not only provides a major source of export earnings, but also of government revenues, said Rozner, deputy program manager for the USAID-funded Fiscal Reform and Economic Governance project. Yet with the volatility of world oil prices, countries that basked in windfall gains in boom times might now be facing a reversal of fortunes as prices have come back down to earth.

There clearly is no single regime or set of instruments that will suit all countries and all circumstances, he added.

Understanding the mechanics of oil fiscal regimes, as well as worldwide practices in taxing oil extraction, can provide a foundation for addressing both the risks and the opportunities that resource abundance entails, Rozner said.

Also during the seminar, Warren Krafchik, director of the International Budget Partnership, introduced the Open Budget Survey 2008, an independent, comparative survey of government budget transparency in 85 countries around the world. Krafchik described the survey's methodology, notable trends in promoting budget transparency and accountability, and steps that governments can take to improve their survey results.

Rozner and other experts wrote about how to address the various risks posed by natural resource abundance in developing countries in From Curse to Cures: Practical Perspectives on Remedying the Resource Curse.

CBAIC Shares Indonesia's Avian Influenza Experience with Bangladesh

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

It has been five years since Indonesia first confirmed reports of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus in poultry, and it is now endemic in much of the archipelago. Globally, Indonesia has been the country hardest hit by HPAI, with more than 141 confirmed human cases and 115 fatalities.

In contrast, the virus was first reported in Bangladesh only two years ago, and there has been but one confirmed human case, from which the person recovered. Earlier this month, a meeting of the Worlds Poultry Science Association in Dhaka, Bangladesh, provided a perfect opportunity for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Community-Based Avian Influenza Control Project (CBAIC) to share nearly three years of HPAI control lessons learned with colleagues in Bangladesh.

CBAIC Senior Technical Advisor Dr. Jonathan Bell presented A community-based approach to the control of avian influenza in Indonesia during the meetings avian influenza session. His presentation outlined Indonesias initial response to the virus, which included disease surveillance on the animal health side and a public health campaign that targeted the interface between people and their backyard chickens.

Experience has shown that the human disease is very rare, Bell pointed out, and moreover only 7 percent of victims were occupationally involved with poultry. Further, the distribution of human cases reflected the distribution of population in general, with cases focused around areas densely populated by people and poultry. These findings led to the realization that HPAI transmission to humans may occur indirectly through environmental contamination or genetic predisposition.

Analysis of the correlation between backyard poultry ownership and human cases showed that human cases were more prevalent in areas with low ownership of backyard poultry, which suggested that commercial poultry played an important role in the transmission of the virus. This hypothesis was supported by research confirming the presence of HPAI in chicken collector yards, which in turn revealed that by cutting the cycle of virus transmission between poultry populations, the transmission of avian influenza to people could also be controlled.

Bell explained how, partly based on these findings, CBAIC developed risk reduction packages aimed at cutting virus transmission pathways for different key audiences. The packages consist of key behaviors to reduce the risk of HPAI transmission between poultry, and from poultry to people. Bell closed his presentation with an example of how, through intensive community mobilization efforts, communities can identify their specific HPAI risk factors and develop a plan for reducing those risks.

The presentation was enthusiastically received by a large audience of government and nongovernment stakeholders in avian influenza control in Bangladesh. Audience members were particularly keen to learn about CBAICs community-based work.

Meanwhile, back home in Indonesia CBAIC continues its work to empower communities to develop and implement HPAI risk reduction action plans; improve biosecurity and, therefore, profitability in the commercial poultry sector; and develop and implement behavior change communications initiatives.

DAI CEO James Boomgard Calls on Lawmakers to Fully Fund International Affairs Budget

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI President and Chief Executive Officer James Boomgard today signed a U.S. Global Leadership Campaign (USGLC) letter calling on lawmakers to fully fund the International Affairs Budget.

Boomgard sits on the Board of the USGLC, a broad-based, nationwide coalition of businesses, nongovernmental organizations, faith-based organizations, and community leaders that advocates for a strong U.S. International Affairs Budget.

The full text of the letter reads as follows:

As a supporter of U.S. global engagement, I am writing to urge you to contact Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC)/Kent Conrad (D-ND) or Ranking Member Paul Ryan (R-WI)/Judd Gregg (R-NH) and urge them to support no less than the $51.7 billion request for the FY10 International Affairs Budget.

A mere 1.4% of the entire FY10 Federal Budget, the International Affairs Budget is essential to protecting our national security, promoting economic prosperity, and demonstrating our humanitarian values around the world. Prominent foreign policy and national security experts, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, senior retired military officers, the U.S. National Security Strategy, and the 9/11 Commission strongly endorse investments in the smart power tools funded by the International Affairs Budget as crucial to our national security and necessary to deliver long-term U.S. foreign policy success.

After a decade of dangerous under-funding, the Congress and the Administration have made important strides in restoring funding for International Affairs programs. Despite these critical steps forward, there remain escalating, unmet needs across the globe including major political transitions, fragile democracies, the pandemic of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, global poverty and famine, and new opportunities for U.S. economic engagement.

Our nation can ill afford to shortchange these vital smart power programs. Your support for no less than $51.7 billion for the International Affairs Budget ensures America will remain engaged in the world and utilize all of the tools and resources it needs to build global stability and strengthen U.S. national interests.

Thank you for your support.

To sign a similar letter to your local congressional representatives on behalf of funding for the International Affairs Budget, click here.

STOP AI's Bowman Reports Progress in Efforts to Thwart Illicit Poultry Trade in Vietnam

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

The smuggling of cheap, illicit poultry into and within Vietnam not only damages the business results and livelihoods of legitimate Vietnamese purveyors -- it increases the chance that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) will be introduced into healthy poultry and human populations.

DAI has begun to address approaches to reducing this market and the inherent risks that it poses to human health, DAI's Dr. John E. Bowman and colleague Dr. Patrice Gautier reported during a recent workshop in Bangkok, the "FAO Second Consultative Meeting on Regional HPAI Risk in the Context of Poultry Sector and Value Chains among Greater Mekong Sub-Region Countries."

More than 30 participants focused on HPAI risk along transborder poultry supply chains involving Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. They included officials from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations' Regional Asia Program Office, the U.S. Agency for International Development Regional Development Mission for Asia (USAID RDMA), and USAID-funded implementing partners.

Discussants provided guidance to FAO regional staff on how to design value chain analysis and behavior-change communication programs along high-priority, cross-border poultry supply routes dominated by illicit trade. Bowman and Gautier, a DAI implementing veterinary partner, focused their presentation on aspects of supply chain certification and public-private partnerships in DAI's USAID-funded Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) activity.

Bowman, DAI's Bethesda-based STOP AI Vietnam activity manager, and Gautier, a Hanoi-based field director, are implementing a model project for STOP AI on the development and certification of free-range chicken supply chains in Vietnam. Surveys indicate that 70 percent of urban consumers would spend up to 10 percent more for traditional chicken products that are guaranteed safe. The project is being implemented initially with two poultry supply chains in northern Vietnam and two in southern Vietnam.

"A big challenge to the success of the project is the presence of cheap, illicit, live and processed poultry products, which come from native farms with very poor biosecurity, yet still claim to be 'certified and safe,'" Bowman said. "A significant amount of illicit poultry is also smuggled into Vietnam across the Chinese border, and winds up in Hanoi at very low prices.

"The low prices of this illicit poultry hinder legitimate 'safe' poultry producers from investing to upgrade farm and slaughterhouse biosecurity, since consumers won't pay the necessary premium if they feel they can get 'safe' native poultry at lower prices."

Bowman added that substantial marketing and consumer education must accompany the project to demonstrate the value and validity of certified free-range products.

To promote safe, legitimate poultry supply chains, the project has so far:

Developed its own set of specifications for a branded proprietary label;

Surveyed poultry retailers and consumers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City;

Assessed the potential for certified, free-range poultry products; and

Entered into negotiations with five private sector and cooperative-based poultry supply chains in north and south Vietnam.

The project intends to partner with numerous suppliers of inputs and services: parental stock dealers, feed manufacturers, slaughterhouses, public and private sector veterinarians, provincial subdepartments of animal health, provincial departments of agriculture and rural development, the agriculture universities of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, certification companies, and the media.

After signing memoranda of understanding with each of the four initial supply chains, the project will apply the specifications at all stages of the supply chains, from the acquisition of parental stock to consumer information. Farms and slaughterhouses will be upgraded as necessary, and a third party will be contracted to certify that specifications are applied.

Marketing campaigns will complement the effort to enhance the publicï¿½s knowledge, and assessments will be performed later this year.

Crowd Fills Georgetown Hall for DAI-Cosponsored Going Green Seminar

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

A VIP panel on March 17 debated and envisaged ways to bring clean energy into the global mainstream during a standing-room-only seminar at Georgetown Universitys Copley Hall.

At Going Green in the Developing World: Climate Change, Clean Tech and Development, there was consensus that developing green technologyand the institutions to implement itwould take work. More importantly, panelists said, changes to public policy could encourage the investment needed to develop and produce cleaner energy that would be deliverable on a broad scale.

How do we transform policies to get the private sector to come in and invest? said Griffin M. Thompson, program manager of the State Departments Asia-Pacific Partnership, and one of five panelists at the seminar sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Developments Global Development Alliance and Global Development Commons, Georgetown University, the Society for International Development, and DAI.

It takes a huge amount of time to advance renewable energy technology, added Christopher Flavin, president of Worldwatch Institute. Countries are riding these tremendous learning curves, and theyre playing out in country after country. Flavin noted that mobile phone technology leapfrogged traditional communications infrastructure in many developing countries. Those very countries, he said, also have a chance to craft clean energy infrastructure from the ground up, instead of building from the 20th-century systems used in industrial countries.

Are these countries going to be at the front of the curve, policy-wise, to shepherd these renewable energy technologies? asked Flavin, observing that countries which do take the lead in this area will be poised to take advantage as markets and technologies expand for cleaner energy sources such as solar, hydro, wind, and biodiesel.

The panel also included Robert Freling, executive director of the Solar Electric Light Fund; Andrew Aulisi, director of the World Resources Institutes Markets and Enterprise Program; and Samuel Shiroff, director of growth markets international sales for Bosch Siemens Home Appliances Group.

Underscoring the importance of policy and the potential for public-private partnerships, Shiroff pointed out that manufacturerswho make product development, research and development, and strategic marketing decisions based on financial projections and analysisneed regulatory clarity and the promise of benefits if they are to venture toward greener pastures.

Audience members stepped up to a microphone after the session to query the panelists. Questions included: What are your top wishes for the upcoming UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen? What can nongovernmental organizations do to facilitate clean, sustainable projects? Is green algae feasible for use as biodiesel fuel or carbon sequestering? How much should adaptation toas opposed to mitigation ofclimate change be a part of future policy talks?

Kristi Ragan of DAI, Chief of Party for the Global Development Alliance, closed the seminar. None of these challenges has a magic bullet to solve them, Ragan said. But that is where the opportunities are.

For more information on how DAI is addressing energy, climate change, and clean technology issues, click here.

New DAI Publication Explores Business Environment Reform and Competitiveness

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI is delighted to announce the publication of Grounds for Growth: Enhancing the Competitiveness Impacts of Business Environment Reform, the latest issue in its Developing Alternatives series.

Edited by DAIs structural reform advisor, Ulrich Ernst, Grounds for Growth explores the relationship between regulatory reform and competitiveness in developing countries, offering practical perspectives on recent efforts to nurture economic growth in such countries by improving the business environment.

We do not have all the answers, concedes Ernst in his introduction, but we are closer to targeting regulatory reform to support economic dynamism and market responsiveness, without sacrificing human concerns in terms of health, safety, and the environment.

DAIs Bryanna Millis and Dan Charette lead off the nine articles in the journal with a discussion of CIBER (Competitiveness Impacts of Business Environment Reform), a tool DAI developed for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Microenterprise Development.

Where Millis and Charette present case studies from Brazil, Serbia, and Ethiopia, Pantjar Simatupang and David Anderson focus on Indonesia, showing how USAIDs Agribusiness Market and Support Activity has used Regional Agribusiness Competitiveness Alliances, or RACAs, to lead public-private dialogue on agricultural development, programs, and policies.

The next three articles all take the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as the proving ground for their analysis:

DAIs Denis Gallagher, who manages the regulatory reform component of USAIDs Technical Assistance for Policy Reform II project in Egypt, draws on experience in Palestine, Eastern Europe, and Egypt to identify the ingredients needed to support successful public-private coalitions for regulatory change;

Lara Goldmark, Chief of Party on the Improving the Business Climate in Morocco program, discusses how her program has used a regional (that is, subnational) version of the World Banks Doing Business indicator to heighten scrutiny of the business environment across Morocco and thereby spur national reform; and

Ulrich Ernst looks at the MENA region as a whole, analyzing Doing Business and Global Competitiveness Report data to explore the relationship between the regions business environment and its competitiveness profile.

In Vietnams Business Environment: Complying with Regulations Abroad and Competing at Home, DAIs Helle Weeke and Steve Parker join with University of California Professor Edmund Malesky to shed light on Vietnams success in reforming its business environment, an effort driven in large part by the need to meet the requirements of trade agreements and accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Regulatory transparency is a crucial aspect of global competitiveness. The WTO, for example, imposes minimum standards on its members, and bilateral free trade agreements often impose even stricter standards. Two contributors to Grounds for Growth explore the path to regulatory transparency: Jeffrey Lubbers of American University, an authority on administrative law, reviews recent developments in rulemaking in the United States, while Delia Rodrigo of the World Bank summarizes trends in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, as well as in developing economies.

Finally, tax administration expert Arturo Jacobs and DAIs Mark GallagherChief of Party for USAIDs Worldwide Fiscal Reform and Economic Governance programcatalogue the more fruitful tax administration reforms implemented in recent years, drawing on firsthand experience in more than a dozen countries, from El Salvador and Georgia to Jordan and Pakistan.

To be added to the electronic or print mailing lists for this and other DAI publications, please contact Suzanne Carroll.

Microsoft Indonesia and SENADA Project Award Prizes for Innovation, Entrepreneurship

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

Microsoft Indonesia and SENADA, a DAI-led project to strengthen Indonesian competitiveness, recently announced the winners of the second iMULAI competition, known as iMULAI 2.0. The competition, designed to cultivate innovation and entrepreneurship in the Indonesian business community, attracted 63 applicants.

"We are really proud to see the growth in the quality and quantity of participants for iMULAI 2.0," said Tony Chen, President Director of PT Microsoft Indonesia. "This reinforces our resolve to continue making the Indonesian IT industry more competitive globally."

Judges from Microsoft, SENADA, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds SENADA, selected the winners based on originality and potential impact on business competitiveness. The three winners of iMULAI 2.0 are:

Grafika Valley, which produced Mobile@Act, a web- and cell phone-based application to enable small business employees, customers, and suppliers to perform daily tasks such as accessing company information in real time, obtaining internal alerts and notifications, and performing authorizations and work process approvals from anywhere;

AMN (PT. Azadirachta Mandiri), which created Collaborative eBusiness System, a mobile enterprise resource planning application designed specifically for small business-to-business communication between producers and consumers; and

PT. Immedia Visi Solusi, which produced an application for internet radio broadcasting that will provide a medium for communication and marketing, giving clients free access to interactive live information that can been heard and played back as many times as needed, in a bilingual (Indonesian and English) format.

Each company wins $25,000 in innovation development funding, various Microsoft products, technology worth $8,000, and hardware valued at $2,500. Winners will also participate in the Microsoft international event, TechED, to be held in Malaysia.

As part of iMULAI 2.0, Microsoft and SENADA organized additional programs to develop the entrepreneurship skills of participants:

Capacity Building: Microsoft and SENADA presented workshops in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya on writing business plans and proposals. A national seminar on intellectual property rights and information technology market opportunities attracted 200 participants.

Microsoft Global Startup Program: Fifty of the iMULAI 2.0 applicants were deemed eligible for Microsoft software licensing in order to promote innovative application development.

SENADA, a four-year project to strengthen the competitiveness of labor-intensive light manufacturing industries, focuses on five sectors: footwear, auto parts, garments, home furnishings, and information and communications technology.

Gary Mullins Presents Avian Influenza Response Poster at Meeting on Emerging Diseases

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST

Dr. Gary Mullins, a DAI expert on veterinary economics and agricultural development, recently attended the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance (IMED 2009) in Vienna, Austria, where he showed how the Community-Based Avian Influenza Control (CBAIC) project has used community participation to improve disease surveillance and control in Indonesia.

To see the poster summarizing Mullins' presentation, click here.

Millions of birds, particularly chickens, have died or been culled worldwide since the emergence in 1997 of the H5N1 strain of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAI). The global health community fears that H5N1 may mutate into a new subtype that could be readily spread from human to human and thereby threaten a pandemic. Human fatalities due to HPAI have occurred in several countries in Southeast Asia, and bird fatalities from HPAIincluding among migratory birdshave occurred in Europe, Central Asia, the Near East, and Africa.

Humans who have contracted HPAI typically have been in close contact with the droppings or remains of infected poultry such as chickens, ducks, and geese. Domestic poultry may become infected with HPAI when diseased birds are introduced into healthy flocks or when they come into contact with wild birds carrying the virus. When the disease is contracted by humans, fatality rates are generally greater than 50 percent. Tracking and stopping HPAI has become a veterinary, public health, and economic development priority in countries where the disease is emerging or has become endemic.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, CBAIC works with the Government of Indonesiawhere HPAI is now endemicto accomplish three critical objectives: strengthening the governments capacity for planning, preparedness, and coordination; improving HPAI prevention and control in poultry; and reducing high-risk transmission behavior among poultry and humans.

Results from CBAICs community mobilization training activity confirm that a community-based volunteer surveillance and response system can significantly reduce the risk of avian influenza transmission, particularly if combined with training on biosecurity in partnership with the commercial poultry sector. Since July 2006, more than 27,000 villages have been reached through the CBAIC project, DAIs Mullins said, adding that strategic use of geographic information systems to map surveillance activities and monitor available resources could significantly improve targeted response to HPAI outbreaks.

Through CBAIC, DAI has helped Indonesia combat HPAI by:

Identifying key audiences such as traders, slaughterers, and consumers, and prioritizing behavior changes needed to reduce HPAI transmission in poultry and humans;

Preparing and delivering community-level HPAI risk-reduction action packages and communication messages;

Training master trainers on HPAI surveillance, reporting, and preventionthe master trainers then cascade this training to community volunteers; and

Integrating into CBAIC a private sector-led program promoting biosecurity measures for commercial poultry production to complement its community mobilization activities.

Importantly, said Mullins, in addition to providing relief to local communities in terms of public health, CBAIC is facilitating the re-establishment of the rural economies and household livelihoods threatened by avian influenza.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Visits DAI Project in Indonesia

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST

The DAI team in Indonesia on February 19 had the honor of helping to host U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at one of its U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project sites.

The former first lady and U.S. senator, visiting Asia for the first time as a member of the Obama administration, traveled to Indonesia as part of a four-country trip that included meetings in Japan, South Korea, and China.

Secretary Clinton walked through the Petojo Utara neighborhood in Jakarta, where she toured projects implemented by DAI's Environmental Services Program (ESP) and other USAID partners. Ms. Nur Endah Shofiani, ESP's regional coordinator for Jakarta, explained the DAI projects to the Secretary, showing her around an urban composting site and a shop where women make handicrafts out of recycled materials.

During her walk around the neighborhood, Secretary Clinton learned how community members utilize used materials, such as plastic bags and bottles, to make handicrafts, such as handbags, wallets, and cell phone holders, reported Jason Rebholz, assistant cultural attach at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, on the State Department's official blog.

It was really amazing; as one of my colleagues put it "these bags look like they were inspired by Andy Warhol, with real laundry detergent packages."

Mrs. Clinton took note of microfinance and small business efforts under way in the community. She was also impressed by the residents' commitment to a cleaner environment, as demonstrated by the trees and shrubs they have planted, and their proper treatment of wastewater.

"The streets were so crowded with people, it was amazing," Rebholz wrote. "She couldn't have received a warmer welcome. From Secretary Clinton's expression, it was clear to me that visiting Petojo Utara and meeting residents there was the highlight of her visit to Indonesia."

The previous night, Mrs. Clinton met for dinner with Indonesia's civil society leaders, including many representing environmental groups. In an after-dinner speech, she spoke of U.S.-Indonesia strategic partnerships and of the United States' interest in supporting Indonesia in forest and marine conservation, climate change, and alternative fuel development.

"Indonesia has experienced a great transformation in the last 10 years," Mrs. Clinton said, as reported by the New York Times. "If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can coexist, go to Indonesia."

For more on the visit and an extensive library of photographs, click here.

ESP, which links environmental and public health, is one of five major programs implemented by DAI in Indonesia on behalf of USAID. The others are the Agribusiness Market and Support Activity (AMARTA), the Community-Based Avian Influenza Control (CBAIC) project, the Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP), and SENADA (the Indonesia Competitiveness Program).

DAI Jordan Formally Launched in Amman

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI yesterday celebrated the launch of the most recent addition to its corporate family: DAI Jordan.

Partners from the donor community, the Jordanian government, and Jordans private sector joined the company in a ceremony at the Amman office, where DAI executives affirmed their commitment to deepening ties with Jordan and building on a long history of delivering development results in Jordan and the region.

We look forward to working with clients, the private and public sectors, and the people of Jordan to bring about sustainable change and real impact that will make a difference in peoples lives, said DAI Jordan Managing Director Jamal Al-Jabiri, who will lead DAIs efforts to expand its project portfolio in Jordan and neighboring countries.

Jamal joined DAI in 2008 after a distinguished 11-year career with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), most recently as USAID/Jordans Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Opportunities. Before joining USAID, he worked for 10 years at The Housing Bank in Amman.

In addition to its corporate offices in Bethesda, Maryland (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.), DAI has operating companies in Ramallah (Palestine) and Johannesburg (South Africa).

DAI Hosts Panel on Network-Centric Development at National Press Club

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAIs Ulrich Ernst and four other thought leaders yesterday sparked a brisk and rich discussion on how network-oriented thinking can be applied in the international development context.

Held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the event was built around the launch of DAIs latest journal, Network Centric Development: Leveraging Economic and Social Linkages for Growth, which features eight articles addressing development issues from economic development and product innovation to democratic transitions, disease control, and geosocial networking.

More than 100 development professionals and other participants came to the event, where a vigorous Q&A broached issues ranging from the relationship between networks and international trade to the relative importance of social and communications technology networks compared to hard infrastructure such as transportation systems.

Network-centric thinking takes the technology we now have and creates new, efficient markets; it enables people to find out what they do best, in places where infrastructure is poor, said Ernst, senior advisor for structural reform policy and editor of the journal.

We had a lively panel, with different viewpoints coming from different angles, Ernst said. It was exciting to listen to what everyone had to say.

Stephen Rasmussen, Manager of the CGAP Technology Program, proved a sure-handed facilitator for the four panelists: Rick Ernst; Guy Ben-Ari of the Center for Strategic and International Studies International Security Program; Cesar Hidalgo, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy Schools Center for International Development; and DAIs Kristi Ragan, strategic advisor to U.S. Agency for International Developments Global Development Alliance.

Ragan emphasized that understanding networks is essential to delivering development results with the scale of impact required. The technologies that support network-centric development can help donors overcome the tendency for process to overtake results, Ragan said. Connecting networks to other networks offers greater scale, innovation, flexibility, and sustainability over larger timeframes.

Network centric development should be at the center of any discussion around aid effectiveness," she added.

Tony Barclay, founder and president of a newly formed nonprofit organization called The Development Practitioners Forum, brought the discussion to a close with remarks on the peer networking potential of the Forum and the prospects for an emerging partnership with Devex, which organized the launch event for DAI.

DAI CEO James Boomgard Profiled in Washington Post

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST

James Boomgard's recent appointment as DAI's Chief Executive Officer has garnered local and national media attention. Boomgard is profiled in this week's "New at the Top," a regular feature in the Washington Post's Business section. He and DAI are also featured in the "Corporate Spotlight" section of February's American Executive magazine.

Boomgard formally took over the reins at DAI on January 1, having been unanimously elected CEO at DAI's September Board meeting. He becomes only the third CEO in DAI's almost 40 years of operations.

DAI Shares Best Practices on Government Spending Oversight at World Bank

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST

The sheer size and complexity of government budgets are intimidating even to elected representatives, let alone the everyday people they representjust one of the factors that make it hard to enforce good governance and smart public spending. But an educated citizenry working in the context of a transparent, responsive government can certainly help to encourage responsible government expenditure.

Last week, DAIs Jeremy Kanthor and Ann Hudock led a World Bank seminar in Washington, D.C., presenting two DAI projects that are helping citizens and elected representatives in Bangladesh and Pakistan to bring about more accountable and more productive use of public funds.

The two projects are doing so in different ways. In Bangladesh, DAI is helping the media, civil society, public institutions, and parliament expand and strengthen their oversight roles; the Pakistan projects public expenditure monitoring focuses on members of parliament at the national and provincial level. Each project seeks to prompt responsible public spending while reducing corruption and waste.

Kanthor and Hudock made their presentation at the Demand for Good Governance (DFGG) Speaker Series before an appreciative audience of practitioners from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other development organizations.

Kanthor, who will soon be moving to Bangladesh to serve as Deputy Chief of Party for the Promoting Governance, Accountability, Transparency, and Integrity (PROGATI) project, also served as project manager for the Pakistan Legislative Strengthening Program.

Notwithstanding the different audiences and approaches, Kanthor pointed out, the critical elements of DAIs success in these two USAID-funded efforts have been the same: making the training easily understood, grabbing the attention and imagination of the participants, and igniting their inner watchdog.

If we can present it in a way so that people understand this very complex, but very critical, information, they have an opportunity to play a role in spending oversight, and an opportunity to assert their role, Kanthor said. We want to get people to ask questions, to be more curious about the process. You might not get the most sophisticated questions at first, but at least people are asking questions and becoming engaged.

DAIs good governance techniques are rooted in experience, noted Hudock, Managing Director of DAIs Governance Sector, which focuses on responsive government institutions, integrity and accountability, and economic policy. She said that DAI is demonstrating in ongoing projects that politics and economics are linked: the rules, institutions, and infrastructure of running a successful economy clearly overlap with those of making good and honest decisions with the publics money.

The DFGG series is an initiative of the DFGG Peer Learning Network of the Social Development Department at the World Bank. The purpose is to showcase innovative and successful DFGG models from inside and outside of the Bank, illustrate the range of regional and sectoral contexts in which DFGG is being applied, and facilitate a flow of ideas and lessons learned among internal and external practitioners.

The January 29 event was hosted by Caroline M. Kende-Robb, acting director of the Banks Social Development Department. Nilofer Ahmed, senior gender specialist in the Social Development Department, served as a discussant for the 90-minute program.

DAI Takes Steps to Make Staff Conference Carbon-Neutral

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

Promoting a cleaner environment is a core value for DAI, but when dozens of DAI employees are flown from project sites around the globe to Washington, D.C., for our biennial staff conference, the environmental consequences can be significant.

DAI has therefore committed to make its 2009 staff conferenceto be held February 23-27a carbon neutral event. The company is doing so by contributing to a Panama reforestation project whose carbon-storing trees will offset the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by hosting the conference.

Working with Clear Sky Climate Solutions, DAI has calculated the emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHGs created by the conference to be 447.29 metric tons. Roughly 99 percent of that will be from GHGs emitted by passenger jets flying DAI employees into Washington; the remaining 1 percent will derive from the use of hotel rooms, the creation of printed materials, and car travel to and from airports.

To make the event carbon-neutral, DAI will pay the current rate for carbon offsetsapproximately US$15 per metric tonto Missoula, Montana-based Clear Sky, for certified and registered carbon offset credits created by one of its partner projects, the Panama Sustainable Forestry and Reforestation Project. Trees and other flora grown by the project absorb, or sequester, GHGs associated with global climate change.

The Panama project, started in 1995 on only 10 hectares of land, has now reforested more than 1,000 hectares of Panamas lowland Pacific rainforest by purchasing degraded or abandoned cattle pastures (typically those cleared of forests from the 1950s to the 1970s) and employing local people to plant trees. Run jointly with Futuro Forestal, the project aims to expand to more than 10,000 hectares by 2012.

Clear Sky plants more than 50 native rainforest species and one commercial timber species (teak), which makes for an exceptionally diverse forest cover. It sustainably harvests a proportion of the timber over the 20- to 30-year management period, and the projects emissions reductions are generated by the remaining forest.

The project has been a model of environmentally and socially responsible climate action, achieving Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for sustainable forestry, and Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) certification at the Gold level for environmental and social criteria.

Andrew Watson, Managing Director of DAIs Nature Sector, said the purchase of carbon offsets is only one small way that people and organizations can contribute to reducing stress on the atmosphere.

Paying someone else to compensate for our own bad behavior is not the be all and end all, Watson emphasized. The unplugging of cell-phone chargers and other unused appliances, a reduction in the use of heating and air conditioning, the development of renewable energy sources and promoting greater energy efficiency all of these and more are needed.

DAI Provides Seed Funding for The Development Practitioners Forum

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI is delighted to announce that it has committed seed funding to The Development Practitioners Forum, a new nonprofit organization dedicated to learning, innovation, and connectivity among practitioners who work at field sites in developing countries. The Forums goal is to document and share problem-solving experience and best practices that make development implementation more scalable and sustainable.

From our earliest days, when we were primarily a research, project design, and evaluation firm, DAI has always been committed to advancing the state of the art in development, explained DAI President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Boomgard.

That commitment survived our transition into a company focused principally on implementing projects overseas, and it endures to this day. Too often, though, for DAI and many other implementing organizations operating at multiple locations, what happens in the field, stays in the field. As a result, many practitioners who work in the field are unable to benefit from relevant experience gained by their peers and counterparts. By helping to launch The Development Practitioners Forum, which will foster increased collaboration and knowledge sharing, we can help to close that gap.

As a professional services firm, Boomgard added, we expect to benefit from the insights, innovations, and solutions that the Forum will generate, but the Forums open source philosophy will ensure that such knowledge is shared freely as part of a common store available to development professionals the world over."

While DAI is the initial sponsor, the Forum is intended to be very much an inclusive, collaborative venture that brings together like-minded practitioners of international development from north and south, public and private sector, and for-profit and nonprofit partners. Negotiations are currently underway with several prospective co-founders, including a major development firm in Europe and an information technology partner here in the United States.

The Forum, which will initially be housed in DAIs Bethesda, Maryland offices, will be led by Tony Barclay, who served as DAIs CEO until December 2008. The Development Practitioners Forum represents both an invigorating new phase in my career and a continuation of my lifelong interest in discovering and sharing the kinds of development practices that work, said Barclay. As the founding President, I look forward to guiding the Forum through its launch, laying the groundwork for its program portfolio, and building the institutional partnerships that will give this organization value and vitality for years to come.

The Forum will be recruiting staff for several full-time positions in early 2009. For more information on the Forum, see www.devprac.org.

Register Now: DAI to Host National Press Club Event on Network-Centric Development

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI is delighted to announce a February 10 event at the National Press Club. Please join us for a discursive and highly interactive session that takes its point of departure from DAIs latest publication: Network-Centric Development: Leveraging Economic and Social Linkages for Growth.

Leading thinkers from DAI, Harvards Center for International Development, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and USAIDs Global Development Alliance will come together for a free-wheeling discussion of networking in all its dimensions from social networking to the new technology of development, from network-centric advocacy and democratic transitions to the implications of network science to economic development.

Facilitated by Stephen Rasmussen , manager of the CGAP Technology Program, our panel is as follows:

Ulrich Ernst, DAIs structural reform advisor, is a specialist in competitiveness issues and the technical editor for Network-Centric Development. His article in the issue looks at disease dynamics and how network concepts help us understand and counter the spread of infection.

Guy Ben-Ari, a fellow in CSISs International Security Program, is the co-author, most recently, of International Collaborative Online Networks: Lessons Learned from the Public, Private and Non-Profit Sectors, a report that highlights the challenges of reaching out to network partners, incentivizing participation, and measuring effectivenesswith in-depth analysis of online networks run by the CIA, the United Nations, the Development Gateway Foundation, and CSIS.

Cesar Hidalgo, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy Schools Center for International Development, did his Ph.D. research at the Center for Complex Network Research at Notre Dame University. In this issue of the DAI publication, he is the co-author, with Harvard colleague Ricardo Hausmann, of A Network View of Economic Development.

Kristi Ragan, Strategic Advisor to USAIDs Global Development Alliance (GDA), builds alliances that make connections beyond the traditional parameters of the development community to deliver development results. An advocate for innovative technology in the development space, she most recently led the GDAs effort to launch the Global Development Commons, including the Development 2.0 Challenge, a technology-for-development competition that yielded groundbreaking solutions based on mobile networks.

Finally, former DAI CEO Tony Barclaynow the President of a newly formed nonprofit organization called the Development Practitioners Forum will bring the discussion to a close with remarks on the peer networking potential of the Forum and the prospects for an emerging partnership with Devex.

Hosted by DAI and organized by Devex, this event is being held at the Ballroom at the National Press Club, downtown. To register now, visit http://www.devex.com/rsvp/1185 or email rsvpdc@devex.com. Or call Devex's Kristina Granger at 202.249.9222.

We look forward to networking with you.

DAI Honored for Civil Affairs Training Provided to Deploying Troops

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

There are field manuals. And then there is the ground truth.

DAIs Bronwen Morrison was presented a plaque of appreciation this week in recognition of the training assistance she and DAI colleague Karen Walsh recently delivered in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The award was presented by Army Maj. Sean D. McLaughlin, manager of the Mobilization Civil Affairs Course, 1st Training Brigade, U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command.

In September and November of last year, Morrison and Walsh, both principal development specialists in DAIs Stability Operations team, spent four days sharing their on-the-ground knowledge with U.S. troops preparing to deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. The troops are to serve as civil affairs officers and work with Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Morrison and Walsh have a combined 35 years of overseas experience, many spent in conflict zones.

They [Morrison and Walsh] are good because they have a lot of real world experience in the theater, McLaughlin said. They were able to tell the guys, this is how it looks in the [field manuals], but this is the ground truth of how it really operates.

Civil affairs is one of the fastest growing specialties in the military, McLaughlin said. Civil affairs personnel serve as a liaison between the inhabitants of a conflict zone or disaster area and the military presence. Among other duties, these troops advise the local commander of the status of the civilian population, facilitate assistance to locals by coordinating military operations with nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations (NGOs and IGOs), and distribute aid and supplies directly to those in need.

McLaughlin credited Morrison and Walsh with training the deploying troops on how they could best work with assets already on the groundincluding U.S. Government interagency actors, NGOs, and IGOsto carry out projects that serve local populations.

Morrison and Walsh performed similar training last year in Fort Meade, Maryland, and have been invited to help train the Staten Island-based 353rd Civil Affairs Command.

For more on DAIs Stability Operations services, click here.

DAI President and CEO James Boomgard Elected to USGLC Board

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

DAI President and Chief Executive Officer James Boomgard has been elected to the Board of the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign (USGLC), a broad-based, nationwide coalition of businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and community leaders that advocates for a strong U.S. International Affairs Budget.

These will be challenging years in the foreign affairs arena for the incoming Obama administration, and correspondingly challenging years for U.S. Government partners such as DAI and the broad alliance of globally oriented organizations brought together under the USGLC umbrella, Boomgard said.

Over the next few years, Ill be working hard within the USGLC coalition and elsewhere to make sure international development receives its due attention and commitment from government as an integral part of U.S. foreign policy.

For a full list of the USGLCs Board members and other leaders, click here.

Catherine Johnston Explores How Value Chain Governance Affects Access to Finance

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

Catherine Johnstons recent publication on Value chain governance and access to finance: Maize, sugar cane and sunflower oil in Uganda is now available. Co-authored with Dick Meyer of The Ohio State University, the article is published in the current issue of Enterprise Development and Microfinance.

This issue of the journal is focused on value chain financing. As issue editor Clare Tawney points out, Johnston and Meyer explore the risks faced by participants in a value chain and argue that different kinds of value chain governance structures lend themselves to financing to different degrees.

Such financing is particularly important in the agricultural sector, as rising food prices and dwindling food security make it imperative to find better ways to support increased agricultural production and marketing. But financial institutions have had relatively little success in overcoming the risks and costs of lending to agriculture.

Value chain finance transactions operate with the same logic as any other financial transaction: the lender must screen and monitor clients, and enforce contracts. To do this, value chain lenders often use information gained through their value chain relationships. Johnston and Meyer explore how the value chain governance structure influences this process.

The authors use a typology of value chain governance structures to analyze the availability of value chain finance in three agricultural value chains in Uganda, considering the impact of market based, balanced, directed, and hierarchical governance structures.

A market-based value chain, for examplecharacterized by arms-length transactions, numerous buyers and sellers, undifferentiated commodities, relatively little information exchanged between firms, and the absence of technical assistanceprovides little opportunity for a lender to screen or monitor clients, and does not favor contract enforcement.

In a directed value chain, on the other handcharacterized by monopolist or monopsonist buyers that take the bulk of a suppliers output, largely define the product specifications, monitor supplier performance, provide technical assistance, and know more about the sellers costs and capabilities than vice versathe lead firm has access to information for screening clients, control over supplier production that allows monitoring, and the power to enforce contracts.

The latter governance structure, the authors conclude, is therefore more likely to yield examples of successful value chain financing than the market-based governance structure.

To review the full discussion, subscribe to the journal, or order an individual issue or article, click here.

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Reference: Johnston, Catherine and Richard L. Meyer. 2008. Value chain governance and access to finance: Maize, sugar cane and sunflower oil in Uganda. Enterprise Development and Microfinance 19 (4), December: 281300.

Development 2.0 Challenge Winners Show Power of Mobile Technology for Development

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

The three winners of the first USAID Development 2.0 Challenge show that in developing countries, cell phonesand in particular the text messages (SMS) they can send so cheaply and quicklyoffer huge potential for development efforts.

All of us in this room are part of a sea change in information flow and transparency, said Erik Hersman of Ushahidi, one of the winners honored in a January 8 ceremony at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., an event that attracted about 250 attendees and brought together participants from all across the development spectrum, including private companies and representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations, and other major institutions in the donor community.

This is a group that were not normally talking to, Hersman noted. They are big and established. Were not. Were new and young.

Ushahidi, co-runnerup ClickDiagnostics, and the first-place winnera team from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairswere selected from the 115 entrants who submitted ideas for using mobile applications to facilitate and improve international development. The Columbia University team, represented by Kirsten Bokenkamp, won $10,000; ClickDiagnostics and Ushahidi each won $5,000.

USAID offered its first-ever open source challenge as part of the Global Development Commons initiative, which seeks to promote innovations that improve international development. The Commons initiative also created www.globaldevelopmentcommons.net, a website designed and managed by DAI and funded by USAID.

ClickDiagnostics deploys a program in four African nations and Bangladesh in which SMS and mobile multimedia link medical experts in big cities with rural health workers. The chain begins and ends with the health worker in the field, who sends a patients images and symptoms via SMS and receives a diagnosis and treatment plan.

The telemedicine program, said ClickDiagnostics Mridul Chowdhury, is leveraging existing medical, technological, and microfinance infrastructure. Were building on what is already out there, Chowdhury emphasized in a well-attended brownbag offered at DAIs Bethesda offices the day after the award.

Ushahidis Hersman, too, stressed the practical advantages of using existing systems. We know that if it [Ushahidi technology] works in Africa, it will work anywhere, he added. It allows everyday people in the world to report what they see.

In early 2008, Hersmans team improvised Ushahidi, an open-source software designed to circumvent the media blackout in Kenya during riots surrounding the presidential election. Ushahidi, which means testimony in Swahili, enabled people to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email, or the web. Kenyans were able to report and map incidents of violence they witnessed, and use information from the platform to make informed decisions on safety and survival.

Software for the platform, the original of which was built in just one week, is being expanded to enable crowd-sourcing of information in other locations and other languages in Africa and the Middle East, Hersman said.

First-place winners Kirsten Bokenkamp and five other Columbia students developed RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance to improve the gathering and quality of nutrition data for children in Malawi.

Cell phones are abundant and popular, and exist even where electric infrastructure does not, Bokenkamp said. Traditional courier-based methods for collecting databased on paper forms and involving laborious copying and inputting of handwritten noteswere too slow and error-prone for effective anti-famine planning in Malawi. So Bokenkamps team created an SMS-based system that enables more timely access to more accurate data in a more manageable format, thereby helping the Malawi government make better informed public health decisions.

By changing a very little thing, health workers in Malawi could transmit data that were previously written and mailed and then entered manually into a database, Bokenkamp said. We hope its scaled up and used as a model elsewhere.

That aspiration was echoed by all the winning teams, and initial interest from programmers and donors such as USAID is encouraging. For more information on the USAID Development 2.0 Challenge, and to learn more about the entries, visit www.globaldevelopmentcommons.net.

Another Way to Stay in Touch: DAI.com Launches RSS Feeds

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

Now you can stay current with developments at DAI by means of RSS feeds from the company website, www.dai.com. These really simple syndication feeds cover three categories of site content: news items, success stories, and projects.

The feeds can be used in various ways. Some web browsers, including certain mobile phones, will allow you to monitor the feedsevery time an item is added in one of the three categories, the feed will update in your browser. In addition, services such as Google Reader allow you to monitor our feeds alongside those from other sources.

To subscribe to a feed, first click on the green RSS icon. The news and success stories icons are both on the splash page of dai.com; to subscribe to the projects feed, go to Our Work, then Projects. Click on Subscribe to this feed. Also on this page is a Learn more about feeds linkan extensive online explanation of feeds and how to use them.

To see your feeds using a standard Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, click on the gold star in the top left corner of the screen. Youll see that you can view the feed by date, title, and perhaps author; we recommend using the date, with the most recent entry first. Youll also notice a link to View feed propertiesthis opens a dialogue box which links in turn to the About feeds information noted above.

A wealth of helpful information on RSS is available on the web. Here are just three useful resources:

As an introduction, you might start with this article from The New York Times

For the visually inclined, try this video on YouTube (requires Flash)

Finally, a comprehensive website dedicated to RSS: http://www.whatisrss.com/

DAI Rule-of-Law Program in Vietnam Awarded Grant by GE Foundation

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST

The U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council Education Forum (USVTC-EF), a key partner of the Support for Trade Acceleration (STAR II) project, has been awarded a $225,000 grant by the GE Foundation.

The grant is for a program titled Advancing the Rule of Law in Vietnam, which builds on STARs long-standing support for increased transparency and public participation in Vietnams lawmaking and rulemaking process.

In 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded STAR project facilitated the passage of important amendments to Vietnams Law on Laws. Among them were requirements that all draft laws and regulations have a 60-day public comment period and a regulatory impact assessment. The public comment period is a key requirement of the World Trade Organization, to which Vietnam acceded in 2007, and both amendments are critical for improving Vietnams commitment to the rule of law and good governance. The grant will help Vietnam effectively implement these major new transparency initiatives.

The program will be carried out largely by the DAI-implemented STAR project and will complement other STAR initiatives in this area. Specifically, the grant will fund:

International experts on public participation in lawmaking and rulemaking to work with the Vietnamese Government in drafting implementing regulations, particularly for the new 60-day public comment period, which will include opportunities for stakeholder contributions;

A fellowship program for Vietnamese policy makers responsible for advancing transparency and the rule of law;

Workshops to train government officials on the new obligations of their agencies to post draft laws and regulations for public comment, study the comments, and report on whether and why the comments were accepted or not acceptedas well as other transparency rulemaking; and

A public education campaign on the rights of individuals and businesses to comment on all draft laws and regulations proposed by state agencies.

USVTC-EF and STAR II will work in collaboration with Vietnamese state agencies, including the Office of Government, Ministry of Justice, and National Assembly, as well as nongovernmental organizations, business associations, academic institutions, and other stakeholders.

Ultimately, the program, which runs through October 2009, will strengthen the rule of law and improve governance in Vietnam, leading to increased economic growth and greater participation by stakeholders in the legislative development process.

For more information on USVTC-EF, click here.

DAI Mourns the Loss of Friend and Colleague David Roy Williams

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI is sad to share the news of the passing of a dear friend and colleague, David Roy Williams, who died on December 18 after a brief illness. David was a devoted father, husband, and friend, and a committed development professional. He is fondly remembered by the many people in Iraq and around the world whose lives he touched with his quiet, unassuming style and unwaveringly positive outlook.

Over 30 years of work in international development, David specialized in providing field-based leadership to large, complex projects in politically turbulent places such as Iraq, Kosovo, Guinea, Rwanda, the Casamance in Senegal, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He first joined DAI as a member of an elite team that entered Iraq shortly after the initial invasion in 2003; after 18 months as the senior program officer, David led DAIs major effort in Iraq for two years as Chief of Party.

Whether in Africa, the Balkans, or the Middle East, the true impact of Davids work was felt in his ability to connect with those around himespecially local staff and partnersand forge deep and lasting friendships.

Steve Connolly, DAIs Bethesda-based Iraq Project Manager, first worked with David in the former Zaire in the mid-1980s and met up with him again in early 2003 at Fort Benning, Georgia, where both were undergoing chem/bio hazard training in preparation for deployment in DAIs Iraq program. David brought an infectious joy to his work, Steve remembers. No matter how apparently dire or complicated the situation, he always kept calm and never lost his enthusiasm. David was one of a kind.

Bruce Spake, DAIs Vice President for Crisis Mitigation and Stability Operations, also began working with David in Zaire, in 1978, on short-term volunteer assignments with the Methodist Church, ferrying in vehicles and supplies from Southern Africa. They later worked together in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) regional office in Lubumbashi, Zaire, where David managed two large infrastructure projects.

In 2003, as Bruce was recruiting a team for Iraq, he contacted David immediately. When David signed up, I could not believe my luck. I knew that the team he would be helping to form would feel the same way when they learned how quickly and calmly he could solve almost any problem in logistics, finance, and administration. David had a remarkable gift. There was no problem he did not have a solution for, as his colleagues and friends witnessed repeatedly. He worked quietly, never took credit, learned quickly, and taught what he knew willingly and patiently to others. His kindness and understanding touched everyone."

All at DAI who had the privilege to work with David knew him for his goodness, generosity, and humility. He always had time to discuss a challenge, toast a success, or share a laugh. He knew how to use humor to help others manage day-to-day problems.

David lived life at his own pace. An invitation to an evening card game was inevitably met with his common refrain of sounds good, but he would never show up until he made his regular call home to chat with his family and wish his son Shawn a good night.

The son of missionaries, David was born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1954. He grew up there and in Lubumbashi. His family home was St. Louis, Missouri, although he lived most recently in Constanta, Romania. He earned a bachelors degree in social anthropology from Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, and a masters in international management from the American School of International Management (Thunderbird) in Glendale, Arizona.

In his professional career, he held positions at firms and organizations including USAID, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Conservation International, Louis Berger International, the American Refugee Committee, and DAI. He was equally at home working with government officials, members of civil society, business associations, construction companies, and import-export firms.

David is survived by his wife Christine and son Shawn, his father Ward, and his sister and brother, Anne and Mark.

New DAI Publication Explores Network-Centric Development

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI is delighted to announce the publication of Network-Centric Development: Leveraging Economic and Social Linkages for Growth, the latest volume in DAIs Developing Alternatives series.

Taking as a premise the ubiquity of networks in modern social and economic life, the journal investigates various ways in which our rapidly advancing understanding of networks and network sciencespurred and facilitated in part by the emergence of the internetcan simultaneously advance our understanding of issues central to international development.

In the introduction, DAIs Ulrich Ernst, the journals technical editor, briefly traces the rapid advance in network science. Cesar Hidalgo from the University of Notre Dame and Ricardo Hausmanndirector of Harvards Center for International Developmentthen advance a new metaphor for economic development in their approach to the product space. Going beyond the model of a growth ladder, they portray economic development as a diffusion process over a network, and their approach yields some sobering conclusions regarding the challenges developing countries face in making the type of product upgrades normally associated with economic progress.

DAIs Bryanna Millis follows up with an article that links global value chains and networks to the basic economic cluster concepts that stress innovative capacity on the producer side. Linking economic and information flows in a broader context is likely to help in understanding relationships, focusing interventions to strengthen value chains, and fostering innovation.

True to Developing Alternatives tradition of grounding analysis in field experience, veteran Chief of Party Gary Kilmer provides a thoroughly practical discussion of the challenges assistance projects face in linking up small producers to global value chains. As a mutual depository of trust, he points out, an assistance project can bridge the gap between small producers and larger distributors, and build lasting networks of relationshipsbut the work involved in building and maintaining those networks is steady and demanding.

The next article, by Stijn ClaessensProfessor of Finance at the University of Amsterdam and an Assistant Director at the International Monetary Funddeals with the implications for competition policy in the financial services sector, given the network character of many of the financial services provided. When the article was written, the global financial meltdown was only one scenario; the article makes for interesting reading as the world contemplates stricter financial regulation and the implications for developed and developing economies.

Looking beyond the strictly economic sphere, DAIs experts in geospatial planning explore the concept of geosocial networking, highlighting the potential of the social webWeb 2.0to combine geographic and social information in a way that fosters interaction and joint action. Their article also illustrates the existing applications of geographic and development-relevant information.

Finally, Joseph Siegle reflects on the role of social networks in promoting democratic development, and in the health sector Ulrich Ernst examines the use of network concepts in understanding the spread of contagious diseases and the formulation of strategies to contain them.

DAI will host an event to explore the various dimensions of network-centric development in Washington, D.C., in early February 2009. To receive a copy of the publication or express interest in attending this event, contact Tele_Tarpeh@dai.com.

Fifteen Finalists Announced in Mobile Applications Challenge

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Deploying solar-powered refrigerators to store perishable medicines. Using cell phones to build a sexual harassment database. Andfor the millions around the world with mobile phones but no internet accessbuilding a call center to field voice or text-message questions and provide on-demand online research over the phone.

These are three of 15 ideas named yesterday as finalists for a $10,000 first prize in the Development 2.0 Challenge, an open call for ideas using technology and mobile applications to advance the cause of international development.

The Challenge was organized by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which received more than 6,000 online votes from around the world for 115 proposals, all of which can be viewed at www.netsquared.org/usaid.

In addition to the $10,000 first prize, two runner-up prizes of $5,000 will be awarded. Winners, chosen by a jury of eight development and technology specialists, will be announced January 8 at an awards ceremony at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

The Development 2.0 Challenge is coordinated by USAID's Global Development Commons team, which includes DAI staff under the Global Development Alliance project.

NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoup Global and a primary partner in the Challenge, seeks to generate positive social change by issuing challenges through the web. USAID and NetSquared aim to help all of the finalists gain support to move their ideas forward.

When a challenge is public and open source, it helps to surface all of the solutions, not just the winner, says Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global.

Budding entrepreneurs submitted ideas to address social and economic challenges in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, water, governance, and regional stability. Interest in some of the projects has already been expressed by USAID missions and bureaus. Challenge organizers will help connect interested parties as appropriate.

DAIs Ernst Sees Good Prospects for Improving Ukraine's Business Environment

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Ukraine, the most populous of the former Soviet states but dragging economically, could dramatically improve its business prospects by making basic administrative changes, according to DAI economist Ulrich Ernst.

Ernst recently completed a 31-page analytical report, In Pursuit of Competitiveness: Prospects to Improve Ukraines Business Environment, which used the World Bank/International Finance Corporations 2008 Doing Business index to compare the business regulations of 181 national economies.

Ukraine ranked 145th in the final rankings, which measure regulatory indicators representing the ease of doing business in the respective countries (Ukraine placed much better on the World Economic Forums measure of competitiveness72nd out of 134 countries).

Using a rankings simulator, Ernst found that by modifying those regulations that affect the Doing Business rankingsprimarily administrative streamliningUkraine could gain 28 places in the ranking, from 145th to 117th.

That is entirely possible, Ernst said. This years reform champion, Azerbaijan, advanced by 64 places (from the 2007 Doing Business rankings to the 2008 rankings), although it is very close to Ukraines competitiveness ranking (69th out of 134 countries ranked). Even next door, Belarus improved its standing by 30 places, from 115th to 85th.

Ernst said his strategic analysis identifies and prioritizes possible interventions to advance effective business environment reform in Ukraine, and to gain recognition in cross-country comparisons.

To read the study in full, click here.

Vote Now for the Best Ideas Connecting Mobile Technology and Development

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Another crucial election concludes Friday, December 12, as voters are urged to choose between more than 100 innovative ideas for using cell phones and other wireless devices in the cause of international development.

Organized by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Development 2.0 Challenge -- an open-source call for ideas -- generated 115 innovative proposals for mobile applications from throughout the world. You can view the list at www.netsquared.org/usaid and vote for up to five of the best proposals.

Budding entrepreneurs submitted ideas to utilize cell phones, smart phones, and other wireless devices to address social and economic challenges in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, water, good governance, and regional stability.

The Development 2.0 Challenge is driven by USAID's Global Development Commons team, which includes DAI staff under the Global Development Alliance project. In October, this team launched the Global Development Commons website -- www.globaldevelopmentcommons.net -- as a place for the technology and development communities to share technological know-how, brainstorm ideas, see what others in the field are doing, and leverage international development information by making it more available to all.

The Global Development Commons team welcomes input from potential partners interested in making www.globaldevelopmentcommons.net a viable space for collaboration. Information on how to participate can be found on the website.

Da Nang Tops 2008 Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index Ranking

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Da Nang province edged out last year's leader Binh Duong to take top ranking in the 2008 Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI), which was released today. Binh Duong was the top PCI province for the past three years ahead of Da Nang.

The PCI measures and benchmarks economic governance based on each province's business environment for private sector development. Widespread publication of the index affords incentive for provinces to pursue business-friendly reform, and provides a way to measure the progress of that reform over time.

The PCI was developed and implemented by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the Vietnam Competitiveness Initiative (VNCI), an economic development project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by DAI.

PCI 2008, the fourth annual edition of the index, represents the unfiltered voice of some 7,820 Vietnamese entrepreneurs and managers of small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition to Da Nang and Binh Duong, this year's stand-outs among Vietnams 64 provinces include Vinh Phuc, Vinh Long, Dong Thap, Long An, Ben Tre, Lao Cai, An Giang, and TT-Hue.

"We congratulate the top performing provinces in this year's PCI ranking," said Chairman Vu Tien Loc of VCCI. "In addition, we strongly appreciate the reform efforts of other provinces, who acquired valuable experience and the motivation to further improve their investment environments."

The analytical report published with the index notes that waiting periods to register a business are at an all-time low and that more provincial respondents have received formal Land Use Rights Certificates. In addition, provincial legal gazettes -- many of them now online -- are making it easier for businesspeople to access the rules and regulations they need to know. Also, the number of business disputes resolved through Provincial Economic Courts has nearly doubled in the past year.

That said, despite strong stability in PCI rankings over time, 2008 scores are generally slightly lower than last year: the median province received a score 2.4 points lower than in 2007, dropping from 55.6 to 53.2, and fewer provinces are now ranked in the "Excellent" and "High" tiers.

DAI Hosts USAID Workshop on Tools to Assess Business Environments

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Economists and development practitioners take various approaches and use various tools to evaluate and ultimately improve business environments. One approach, for example, is to review a countrys regulations and policies, and determine which ones help or hurt; another is to look from the bottom up, through the lens of producers, wholesalers, and retailersas well as others in the value chainto see from their perspectives the gateways and hurdles to vibrant commerce.

Late last month, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chaired a workshop at DAIs office in Bethesda, Maryland, where participants examined two new tools used to analyze a countrys business environment, then identify, prioritize, and promote needed business environment reforms.

USAIDs Wade Channel presented BizCLIR, developed by Booz Allen Hamilton as a framework to analyze a countrys commercial law regime and the implementing institutions, supporting institutions, and social dynamics that either enable or disable private sector activity.

DAIs Ulrich Ernst presented the Competitiveness Impacts of Business Environment Reform (CIBER) tool, originally developed by Ernst and DAI's Bryanna Millis to assess constraints to the development of Brazils cashew nut value chain.

CIBER identifies and prioritizes value chain-specific business environment constraints by involving value chain stakeholders in the assessment process. This bottom-up approach takes into account quantitative and qualitative factors, and goes further by assessing the political and economic feasibility of reform options and by developing a stakeholder-driven advocacy strategy to promote feasible reform. In Ethiopia, to take another example, DAIs Dan Charette and Faisal Naru used CIBER to analyze Addis Ababas handloom weaving value chain. (CIBER is presented in some detail in a forthcoming issue of Developing Alternatives, focused on business environment reform.)

Some 30 people gathered for the six-hour workshop, including representatives from three USAID Bureau for Economic Growth and Trade offices (Microenterprise Development, Agriculture, and Economic Growth), Booz Allen, and ACDI/VOCA.

In a structured brainstorming session, workshop attendees spoke to the well-established value chain framework as well as the positive aspects of both CIBER and BizCLIR, and made initial progress toward developing a comprehensive approach to value chain-specific business environment reform.

DAI's Morgos: Azerbaijan Project Empowers Grassroots Politics

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Azerbaijan has a lot going for it, and against it. The small nation nestled between Russia and Iran and bordering Georgia is growing wealthy from oil and gas production, yet many of its 8.2 million citizens continue to suffer from basic problems, including poor roads, inadequate water and electricity services, unemployment, and endemic poverty.

Government leaders in Azerbaijan are being trained to address these problems through improved outreach and support to their constituencies. The Parliamentary Program in Azerbaijan (PPA) is working with difference-makers not only in the capital of Baku, but at the grassroots level in previously neglected small towns throughout the country.

DAI's Chief of Party Petro Morgos discussed the program's achievements last week during a presentation at DAI headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, and made similar presentations at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is funding PPA.

The two-year project, which began in April 2007, recently recognized 105 Member of Parliament Assistants (MPAs) and legislative staff who for the past year have trained to deliver better services and constituency support in Azerbaijan, which has a legacy of centralized authority. Thirty of the MPAs and staff received certificates personally on Nov. 26 in Baku from Madeline Marchessoult, Chief of Staff for USAID Administrator Henrietta H. Fore.

In his presentations, Morgos noted that the political environment in Azerbaijan is complex because of competing interests in the capital, not all of which bode well for positive development in Azerbaijan's outlying regions. Those factors, he said, make PPA's progress at the grassroots level all the more necessary.

"We have made fundamental headway that we believe is the seed for the beginning of effective democracy," Morgos said, "and that is working with the MPAs."

The training, Morgos explained, includes lessons on how to set up local parliamentary offices, establish communication with citizens and media, and address constituents' concerns. The assistants-who unlike the Members of Parliament are required to live and work in their home districts-are becoming the ombudsmen between their citizenries and the parliamentarians in Baku, as well as links to local nongovernmental organizations, executive authorities, and municipalities.

After initial skepticism, Morgos said, leaders in the Azerbaijan parliament (the Milli Mejlis) have warmed to the "bottom-up" style of training as they see their subordinates learning useful technical skills.

"Now they are embracing it," Morgos said of the Azerbaijani leadership. "And I can tell you, [the MPAs] are really committed to their constituencies. They are solving a tremendous number of problems on the ground, and they have influence and are able to call the right people."

PPA has also led Azerbaijani leaders on two study tours to the United States and one to Poland, established a parliamentary research institute that supports evidence-based policy making, developed a legislative database for greater public transparency, and supported parliamentary media relations and public outreach strategy, among other accomplishments.

In the end, Morgos said the training will ultimately benefit not only those who receive it but the people they serve. "There's going to be a switch," Morgos predicted, "in how the constituents see their parliament -- a switch from disengagement to one of representation and trust."

For more on PPA's activities, click here.

Vietnam Launches Groundbreaking Technical Barriers to Trade Handbook

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Through its Support for Trade Acceleration (STAR) projects, DAI has for many years worked hand in hand with the Vietnamese government on technical standards issues, smoothing the road for commerce at the local, regional, and national levels and paving the way for Vietnam's 2007 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The extensive knowledge generated by this effort has now been collected for the first time in a single, living document. The Technical Barriers to Trade Handbook, or TBT Handbook, was launched yesterday by the Vietnamese Directorate for Standards and Quality (STAMEQ) and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Much requested by Vietnamese as well as international commercial actors, the handbook brings together for the first time an expansive range of trade knowledge and resources regarding standards, metrology, conformity assessment, and TBT. It provides a general understanding of these issues and their relationship to enhancing trade facilitation, market access, and export competitiveness in accordance with the WTO, the TBT Agreement, and the Agreement on Sanitary, Phytosanitary Measures (SPS). It provides information for government, businesses, and consumers throughout Vietnam andin its electronic versionaffords access to numerous pertinent hyperlinks and online reference materials.

A living document with regular updates, the TBT Handbook will be available from the STAR website (www.starvietnam.org), in English and Vietnamese. A limited number of printed and CD-based copies are available on request from STAR-Vietnam.

DAI Launches New Health Sector

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI today announced the launch of a new Health sector that will lead the companys provision of integrated health services and expertise to donors, governments, and philanthropies worldwide.

This is an exciting expansion for DAI, and its fitting that we announce it on World AIDS Day, said Jerry Martin, Managing Director of the new Health sector. For decades, DAI has been working in health, whether by providing veterinary services, helping prepare for and control disease outbreaks, improving the livelihoods of HIV/AIDS-affected populations, ensuring food safety, or providing cleaner water and a healthier environment. Our expertise in these disciplines has now reached a critical mass; in launching a standalone Health sector, we are providing the additional organizational resources that will enable us to deliver a truly integrated suite of health and development services to new and existing clients.

DAIs Health team will focus interventions where human health and livelihoods intersect with animal health and environmental concerns. Building on our existing work in pandemic preparedness and response, animal health, HIV/AIDS prevention, livelihoods and nutrition, and water and sanitation, DAI will provide services to help put the one world, one health concept into practice.

The Health team will work in areas complementary to our existing development programs, including:

Animal Health veterinary services, zoonotic disease control, biosafety and biosecurity measures

Behavior Change Communication public awareness campaigns, community mobilization

Food Safety sanitary and phytosanitary standards, safe handling practices

HIV/AIDS Prevention workplace-based awareness programs

Livelihoods, Economic Strengthening, and Nutrition income-generating activities for vulnerable populations, household nutrition gardens, microfinance

Avian and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response pandemic preparedness strategies and contingency planning, outbreak mapping, veterinary and public health training

Water and Sanitation access to clean water, improved hygiene, financing for water infrastructure, water and sanitation policy

For more information on DAIs work in the Health sector, click here or email Rhiannon Gulick.

David Neven Co-authors Chapter in FAO Book on Transformation of Agri-Food Systems

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

David Neven has contributed a chapter to a new United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) book that looks at how globalization is affecting agri-food supply chains and smallholder farmers.

Co-authored with Thomas Reardon of Michigan State University, Nevens chapter shows how the rise of domestic supermarkets has restructured Kenyas fresh fruits and vegetables supply chains. The analysis is based on a study financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development (through the RAISE SPS project, managed by DAI), and the World Bank.

Changes in end-consumer demand, ongoing trade and market liberalization, and increasing globalization have spurred a structural transformation in the agri-food systems of developing countries such as Kenya. At the forefront of this modernization process: the supermarket. The Kenya-case study concludes that supermarkets are far from business as usual for Kenyan suppliers.

Facing an increasingly strong supermarket presence, these suppliers are challenged to deliver larger volumes and a more continuous supply throughout the year; higher and more consistent quality standards; more complex delivery formats (such as timing and packaging requirements); and more challenging payment termsincluding longer gaps between delivery and payment, breakage fees, and discounts for promotional sales of produce.

These challenges are amplified by:

New competition generated by supermarket chains offering attractive points of entry for diverted exports and foreign suppliers;

The smaller number of alternative procurement points remaining in the market as supermarkets increase their market share relative to traditional retailers, and as they consolidate; and

The improving value delivered to consumers by surviving traditional retailers, which increases pressure on suppliers to comply with higher standards.

Overcoming these challenges requires substantial resources: managerial skill, information, physical and financial capital, labor, and technologyresources to which small farms and firms typically have limited access. Many farmers in Kenya may not be able to make the grade and will be forced to exit horticulture altogether. In other countries, examples abound of small producers (farms and processing firms) excluded from selling to supermarkets because they could not meet the challenges.

On the other hand, a few case studies illustrate that some small farmers and groups of farmers have found ways to overcome these challenges and grow with supermarkets, which represent great opportunities for growth through market enlargement and the introduction of higher-value products into urban markets. Given that supermarket development in Kenya is still in its early stages, the emphasis should be placed on the opportunities they create, Neven and Reardon suggest.

At the very least, development programmes, government policies, and private sector associations seeking to assist small producers in Kenyas agri-food sector should take these supermarket-induced market dynamics into account.

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Reference: Neven, D. and T. Reardon. 2008. The Rapid Rise of Kenyan Supermarkets: Impacts on the Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chain. In McCullough, E.B., Pingali, P.L. and Stamoulis, K.G. (eds.), The Transformation of Agri-food Systems: Globalization, Supply Chains, and Smallholder Farmers. London: Earthscan Press.

DAIs Chuck Chopak Gives Forward-Looking Presentation on Food Security

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

Dr. Chuck Chopak, a 29-year food security professional who recently joined DAI, yesterday delivered a presentation titled Food Security Concepts and Approaches to an appreciative audience of his new colleagues at DAI headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland.

There is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone, Chopak pointed out, but substantial numbers of people remain food insecure, meaning they lack access to enough food to live healthy and active lives. Achieving food security takes more than loading a truck with bags of rice and distributing it to poor households, Chopak said: broader factors to be addressed include the physical availability of nutritious food, the economic and physical access to that food, how food is used and stored, and the stability of these factors over time, at the global, national, community, and individual levels.

Moreover, global dynamics such as the price of oil and other inputs, the influence of global food markets, and the evolving shape of the world economyin addition to policy issues such as subsidies paid to farmers in the United States and Europe, which often distort markets to the disadvantage of farmers in poorer countriesare changing the food security landscape and changing how food-relief efforts are designed and implemented.

To reach the worlds poorest people, it takes time, money, and effort to develop good, solid, sustainable solutions, said Chopak, who for the past eight years managed the Washington, D.C.-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Activity, including the past three years as Chief of Party for FEWS NET II.

Henceforward, Chopak will help to lead DAIs food security projects, analyzing the macro- and micro-dynamics that affect food security, then designing and implementing programs to be used by regions, countries, and communities to improve their food security profiles. Ideally, said Chopak, the programs of the future will extend beyond the ministries where decisions are made, the ports where food is imported and exported, and the farms and markets where food is grown and soldto reach the most isolated and hopeless of the hungry.

Strengthening the livelihoods of all people, especially the poor, Chopak said, is what we all want to do.

DAI Leads Roundtable on Using Microfinance to Deliver Water and Sanitation for the Poor

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

Worldwide, some 1.5 billion people are without clean water and 2.5 billion without adequate sanitation. Yet, time and again, the poor express their willingness to pay for such amenities, given the option. The challenge is finding the right mix of financing and servicing solutions. To address this issue, DAI convened and facilitated a November roundtable under the auspices of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Advancing the Blue Revolution Initiative (ABRI), in collaboration with USAIDs Microenterprise Office.

From across the world, 19 organizations came to Washington, D.C., to discuss different business models, challenges, and opportunities to reach scale. The model that garnered the most interest from microfinance institutions (MFIs) was the DAI-designed and -led utility/MFI collaboration pioneered by the Indonesia Environmental Services Program (ESP). This model was originally piloted by the Tanah Datar Water Utilitya small public utility in West Sumatraand its Director Gusril Bahar, who is now an ESP employee. ESP developed, expanded, and adapted this approach for replication in other utilities.

Often, utilities lack the funds to pay for connection costs, and poor people likewise struggle to pull together the cash for such a significant one-time expenditure, which generally ranges from US$100 to $300. Enter microfinance. DAI expert Allen Hollenbachwho addressed the roundtable by conference callexplained how ESP is bringing together utilities and MFIs to provide affordable and sustainable clean water access to Indonesias underserved poor. The solution is more than just providing a pipe to a household; it involves structuring the deal to ensure that customers get reliable supplies of clean water, that the microloans are feasible and paid on time, and that finance and water providers make money at the same timea win-win for all stakeholders.

The ESP model, as Hollenbach described it, delivers water to those who need it by making a series of linkages: a customer applies for a water hookup, the utility calculates the cost and informs the MFI, the customer requests a loan, the MFI reviews and approves the loan, the MFI transfers the funds to the utility, the utility installs the connection, and the customer begins paying installments to the MFI. The details of this process are governed by a master agreement facilitated by ESP between the water utility and the MFI.

Four MFIs in Indonesia are currently providing microcredit services to 11 water utilities, Hollenbach said, the most active partner (by far) being Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI). The average loan is for $150 and customers have 12 to 24 months to repay, at a fixed interest rate of 1 percent to 2 percent per month. The models ability to scale quickly across Indonesia impressed roundtable participants as an approach viable for replication in other parts of the world.

The roundtable audience was especially encouraged by the incentives for MFIs built into the ESP model, said Kristina Kohler, a Partnership Development Specialist on ABRI. The MFIs liked the fact that they were gaining access to a new marketpeople served by the utilityand had a master agreement with the utility, Kohler said. The master agreement provides security against financial risk in two ways: water utilities generally (10 out of 11 cases so far) provide a financial guarantee for the loans provided to new utility customers, and the utility will shut off the water if a customer does not pay for three consecutive months.

Participants at the roundtable included sectoral specialists such as WaterPartners International, as well as international donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Acumen Fund. More than 30 experts convened, in addition to representatives from USAID, DAIs ABRI team, and DAI finance expert Mary Miller.

The meetings goals were to inform the MFI community about new product development opportunities for water and sanitation needs, identify MFIs interested in starting new pilot programs, support the creation of a network dedicated to finding microfinance-related ways to expand water and sanitation services, and share lessons learned in this field.

To learn more about the topic or get involved in this nascent network of interested parties, contact Kristina Kohler.

John Bowman Leads Workshop in Uganda on Quality of African Agricultural Products

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

Raising the quality of African-grown food to international standardsand thereby making it both more sanitary and more exportablewas the subject of an October 2931 workshop in Kampala, Uganda, led by DAIs Dr. John E. Bowman.

The "Workshop on Emerging Food Safety and Agricultural Health Standards for Africa focused on food standards and safety. Bowman, who has led agricultural development projects in some 30 countries, brought together experts from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded field projects that help Africa's small farmers meet export requirements.

Farm products within the scope of the workshop include fruit, vegetables, and nuts; trees, shrubs, and flowers; coffee, organic foods, and fiber; livestock, hides, and skins; and fisheries.

USAID economic growth officers from regional and bilateral missions in Eastern and Southern Africa trained at the workshop. Speakers from the World Bank gave keynote addresses on the role of agrifood standards in value chains and on the growing problem of the mango fruit flyan invasive pest that threatens Sub-Saharan Africas entire horticultural export sector.

DAI was invited to lead the workshop by USAIDs Office of Agriculture in the Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade Bureau, which sponsored the event as part of its Environmental Policy and Institutional Strengthening contract.

Equatorial Guinea Releases $1 Million to Fund DAI-Designed Social Projects

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

For two years, DAI has helped the Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea build systems for good governance, with the goal of enabling the small African nation to use some of its newfound oil wealth on positive social programs. Those systems in place, the Government has now honored its end of the bargain and opened its coffers.

On October 28, the Government released approximately US$1 million to begin implementing 10 high-priority projects under the Government's Social Development Fund (SDF). This investment kicked off the long-awaited implementation phase of the U.S. Agency for International Developments Technical Support Program. The funding represents the first installment of $20 million budgeted by the Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea over the next three yearsmoney that will pay for approximately 50 projects.

DAI paved the way for this investment by helping Equatorial Guinea establish its SDF, creating systems to ensure the Governments money is spent transparently and accountably, designing projects for future implementation, and training Government staff to help launch and ultimately take over operation of the SDF.

The first projects will fall into two categories: collecting baseline data to determine existing health and social conditions, in order to target real needs; and executing various services in primary health care, preschool education, malaria containment, teacher training, and rural womens self-help.

Technology Meets Development at New Global Development Commons Website

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

In Malawi, women shell peanutsmillions of themusing a machine that they crank by hand. That may sound primitive, but before the advent of this simple machine, they shelled nuts with their fingers, sometimes until their hands bled.

In West Africa, farmers and traders get up-to-the minute crop pricing information on their cell phones, thanks to Tradenet.biz.

And throughout the world, emergency services workers can find urgent information on disaster relief through a single website: ReliefWeb.

These and other innovations where technology meets international development have been collected for everyones use at one new sitewww.globaldevelopmentcommons.netdeveloped by DAI and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID unveiled its Global Development Commons (GDC) conceptan initiative to leverage information and communication technology and make international development information more available to allin October 2007. From the beginning, an important part of that vision was an online site where people can share technological know-how, brainstorm ideas, and see what others in the field are doing.

In July, DAI was awarded a contract to bring the vision to reality. On Friday, GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net was launched, bringing together technology topics such as data visualization with development topics such as agriculture, democracy and governance, economic growth, and trade.

In a related effort to mine potential benefits at the intersection of technology and development, DAIs GDC team on October 13 helped to launch the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge (accessible through globaldevelopmentcommons.net).

USAIDs first open-source challenge invites contributors to suggest ways in which mobile applicationsthose used by cell phones, smart phones, and other wireless devicescan generate value for people in developing countries. Assistance and development areas that could benefit from the ideas include health, banking, education, agriculture, and trade.

The GDC team welcomes input from partners interested in making globaldevelopmentcommons.net a viable space for collaborating and for making information available to the international development community. Information on how to participate can be found on the website.

DAI Gives Presentation at Defense Department Security Training Event

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

Today and tomorrow, DAIs Bronwen Morrison and Karen Walsh are presenting to 150 military leaders at the Department of Defense Interagency Advisory Training Working Group at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

Experts from various military training centers are convening for two days to discuss security force assistance. Members of 19 military units from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marinesall of whom specialize in training for stability operationswill be making presentations, as will the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of States Foreign Service Institute.

The goal of the event is for the diverse units and experts to share knowledge on foreign security assistance and explore avenues for cooperation.

DAI is the lone development contractor invited to present. In a presentation titled DAI: Nontraditional Security Force Assistance, Morrison and Walsh will inform the audience about DAI and its clients, DAIs core competencies and global footprint, the stability operations teams mission, nontraditional security services, and DAI training courses and tasks, as well as recounting some of DAIs experiences in stability and counter-terrorism operations.

Walsh, a recent addition to the DAI team, most recently served as technical director for USAIDs Office of Transition Initiatives-funded rapid response programs in Pakistan, Colombia, and Liberia. Before that she worked for USAID in Iraq from the invasion until July 2004.

Another recent addition to the DAI stability operations teamBrigadier General (Ret.) Russell Howard, our senior advisor for stability operationswas a featured panelist at the October 21 symposium, Dealing with Todays Asymmetric Threat: Enhancing and Applying Soft Power.

Held in Arlington, Virginia, the CACI-sponsored symposium featured experts from the five military branches and the departments of State and Commerce, and representatives from the McCain and Obama presidential campaigns.

STAR Economist Joins Nobel Laureate Krugman In Exploring Vietnam's Challenges

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

Dr. Vu Huy, an economist on the Support for Trade Acceleration Project (STAR II), and Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, were among a distinguished group of scholars and diplomats speaking at a conference exploring the economic and social challenges facing Vietnam.

Hosted by Princeton University, last weeks conference"Vietnam and East Asia in a Globalized Context"featured panel discussions on the country's fiscal needs and the challenges it faces in civil governance, health, and education.

Other participants included representatives from the Institute of Development Studies in Hanoi, the Hanoi School of Public Health, and Vietnam National University; Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; and Thomas Christensen, who recently served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

STAR II consultants Steve Parker of DAI and James RiedelWilliam L. Clayton Professor of International Economics at the School of Advanced International Studiesalso gave presentations.

Erik Meijaard Facilitates National Geographic Feature Story on Borneo Deforestation

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

When National Geographic reporter Mel White needed local knowledge and insight on how under-regulated logging is damaging Borneos fabled biodiversity, he relied on Erik Meijaard of DAIs Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP). The results of the collaboration can be found in a thoughtful and richly photographed feature story in the November 2008 issue of the magazine.

Meijaard, who is based in Balikpapan in Kalimantan (one of OCSPs two regional offices), was contacted by White in September 2007 as the reporter was researching the article. In particular, White wished to travel to the vast East Kalimantan province where Meijaardwho is fluent in the local language and an expert in the local conservation situationis working with OCSP.

The story, in part, describes how the hardwood, lowland forests of East Kalimantanthe natural habitat for the endangered orangutanshave been cut down and replaced by vast tracts of oil palm trees that yield a profitable harvest of palm oil. While palm oil and logging generate business and jobs, the unrestrained clear-cutting is upending the ecological balance on the island of Borneo.

In preparation for the story, White read opinion pieces and scientific articles by Meijaard. Meijaard then helped White make travel arrangements and identify key locations and issues. He also facilitated introductions to key players. Erik was absolutely vital to the story, White summed up in an e-mail to DAI that also paid tribute to the contributions of Paul Hartman, OCSPs Chief of Party.

OCSP works with government, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, community groups, and other stakeholders to maximize the protection and long-term survival prospects of orangutan populations in the wild.

To read the National Geographic story online, click here.

Tony Barclay Wins Government Contractor Executive of the Year Award

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI Chief Executive Officer Tony Barclay was last night named Government Contractor Executive of the Year. He won in the large company category, which recognizes executives from companies with annual revenues in excess of $300 million.

This prestigious award is a fitting tribute to a fine man and an exemplary business leader, said DAI President Jim Boomgard, who last month was chosen by DAIs Board of Directors to succeed Barclay as CEO, effective January 1, 2009. It recognizes Tony's 30-plus years of unwavering service to DAI, to the development community at large, and to the professional services industry. It also signifies the respect DAI has earned among our peers in the Washington business community for making a difference in people's lives, and validates our partnership in the U.S. Government's commitment to economic development around the world."

Barclay accepted the award in person. This award really belongs to my fellow employee owners at DAI, he said. Theyve seen me grow up with the companyand I mean this literally, because Ive spent exactly half my lifetime here. Ive had constant encouragement and lots of honest feedback from our management team, from my family, from many friends and advisors, and from our staff who are working in every corner of the world. I am grateful to all of them for their confidence and trust, and for helping me to set DAIs course for the future.

The Greater Washington Government Contractor of the Year Awards are presented annually by the Northern Virginia Government Contractors Council (GovCon), the Professional Services Council, and Washington Technology magazine. Finalists for the 6th annual awards were announced September 3 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

The same venue was the setting for last nights ceremony, where some 830 attendees saw awards presented for Contractor of the Year, Public Sector Partner of the Year, and Executive of the Year. Norman R. Augustine of Lockheed Martin Corp. was inducted into the GovCon Hall of Fame.

Fellow finalists for Executive of the Year in the large company category were Paul Cofoni, President and CEO of CACI International, and Mac Curtis, President and CEO of Vangent, Inc. Nominations addressed the executives personal contributions and leadership provided in three categories: to the community, to the government contracting industry, and to the company.

Last nights presentation was DAIs second major success at the GovCon awards in the past two years. In 2006, DAI was named Contractor of the Year in the large company category.

For a full list of 2008 nominees and winners in all of the award categories, click here.

Ulrich Ernst Issues Recommendations for Tunisia-Based Regional Regulatory Center

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

Commissioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, DAIs Ulrich Ernst recently prepared a report recommending steps to establish a regional Center for Expertise and Regulatory Quality in Tunis, Tunisia.

The motivation for the new center is Tunisias desire to further integrate into regionalMiddle Eastern, North African, and Mediterraneanand global markets. The consensus is that the regions profusion of rules and regulations makes it increasingly difficult to avoid legal inconsistencies. Tunisias leaders have already embraced a need for change in their own countrys rule-making process.

Ernstan expert in business environment reformenvisages the center opening, at least virtually, in November 2008, with conferences in the summer of 2009 followed by a physical opening at a site in Tunis in September or October 2009.

The center, according to Ernst, should choose a focal-point issue around which to develop the framework for a Tunisian approach to Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA). This approach would serve to establish the center as a forward-thinking regulatory reformer in the region.

Employing the latest internet technology will enable the center to link with like-minded regulatory reformers outside the region, says Ernst, and enlisting at least one other regional nation behind Tunisias regulatory reform agenda will boost the centers credentials as a regional training institution. The new center should initially focus on outreach to regional partners to demonstrate the applicability of RIA adapted to Tunisian and regional standards, Ernst recommends.

Among other first steps would be to launch a professional journal and host a national and, later, regional conference, and recruit a permanent interdisciplinary staff combining skills in legal drafting and analysis with quantitative expertise in economics, financial analysis, and risk appraisal.

To read the report in full, click here.

DAIs Kristi Ragan, Ed Rackley Facilitate Talks at Clinton Global Initiative

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

Major corporations and leading philanthropies such as the Bill & Melinda Gates, Nike, and Google foundations were just a few of the organizations drawn to last months Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), the annual aid- and development-focused gathering hosted by former President Bill Clinton in New York City. The more than 2,000 attendees included current and former heads of state, world leaders, CEOs, and celebrities. Also in attendance were DAIs Kristi Ragan and Ed Rackley.

Ragan and Rackley guided separate table discussions among the guestsrecording ideas, prompting comments, and forwarding recommendations. Ragan, DAIs Chief of Party on the Global Development Alliances Strategic Support Program, led her tables in brainstorming sessions about alleviating poverty by promoting microfinance, addressing food security, and utilizing communication technologies. Rackley, who joined DAI in July after a 20-year career specializing in African relief operations, served as a facilitator at tables that probed global education issues.

The CGI places a premium on moving beyond talk to secure firm commitments, said Ragan and Rackley, and this years meeting was no different. PepsiCo Foundation pledged $4.1 million to WaterPartners to promote sound water practices in India, for example, while Swiss Re and Oxfam America teamed up on a project to address climate change and its effect on farming in Ethiopia. WalMart, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs also made commitments at this session. So far this year, the CGI has finalized more than 250 commitments worth $8 billion, focusing on health partnerships that reach diseases beyond HIV/AIDS.

Invited to attend the event by Gene Sperling, President Clintons former national economic advisor and one of the CGI leaders, Rackley said DAIs 38-year history of tackling global development issues gave him great traction in steering the participants discussions.

For me, the most obvious thing was that we can broker these public-private partnerships, Rackley said. We have a lot of best-practice knowledge, while these are people who do not have a lot of in-field experience. If we can bring our insights to their decisions about what type of projects to support, thats a definite added value of us being there.

DAIs Steve Parker Addresses U.S. International Trade Commission on Vietnams Progress

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST

Only 25 years ago, Vietnam was one of the worlds poorer countries. It struggled with the aftermath of the Vietnam War into the early 1990s, with an embargo limiting most trade, investment, and donor engagement.

But as Vietnam normalized political and economic relations with most countries and donor organizationsdramatically modernizing its legal and administrative system and liberalizing its economyit became one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Last week, DAIs Steve Parker, who for five-and-a-half years led the first major U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded technical assistance project in Vietnam since the war, gave a seminar on Vietnams remarkable progress to the U.S. International Trade Commission, one of the largest groups of trade and industrial economists in the U.S. Government.

Parkers presentation reviewed the findings of a Support for Trade Acceleration (STAR) Project/DAI team who reviewed the impact on Vietnams trade, investment, and economic structure of the 2001 U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement and Vietnams subsequent accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). He also summarized the key role played by USAIDs STAR Project in supporting the reform of more than 100 laws and regulations over the past seven years. STAR has been recognized in a joint communiqué by Vietnams President Triet and U.S. President Bush as playing a critical role in supporting Vietnams successful accession to the WTO.

Key findings showed an eight-fold increase in Vietnamese trade with the United States and a substantial increase in direct investment from U.S. firms following normalization of economic relations in December 2001. Following WTO accession in January 2007, while export growth continued solidly, imports into Vietnam grew far more rapidly. Both foreign direct investment and foreign indirect investment in stock and bond markets surged.

The success of the WTO, however, led to new challenges for managing an open-market economy. While a huge current account deficit was covered by even higher capital account surplus, inflation spiked to almost 30 percent as the central bank could not adequately sterilize the impact of the huge capital inflows on domestic monetary growth. Other factors were important as well, including a large increase in government investment spending, largely through state-owned enterprises, which expanded the fiscal deficit. How to harness an overheated economy has become the chief economic management challenge in Vietnam.

The STAR/DAI studies show that policy changes directly related to WTO accession had a limited impact on these macroeconomic trends. But clearly, the credibility and confidence gained through WTO accession indirectly contributed both to the surge in foreign investment and to the Vietnamese governments decision to pursue higher rates of growth and expanded government investment.

Almost everybody in Vietnam has a better life than they did 20 years ago, Parker said, attributing much of that improvement to Vietnams stronger market orientation, rapidly growing private sector, and steadily increasing integration into the world economy.

However, the past two years have revealed major deficiencies in Vietnams institutional capacities to manage a rapidly growing post-WTO economy as it integrates into global markets. In addition, the country is showing strains from rising income disparities. And Vietnamese citizens increasingly expect that economic development and public administration and governance will continue to improve.

Parker made recommendations for prioritizing the next steps in Vietnams economic development: helping institutions throughout the country to overcome an implementation gap by modernizing and growing their capabilities in line with WTO criteria and international best practice, and encouraging Vietnam to make the quantity and quality of investment needed to surmount its own infrastructure gap, particularly in education, vocational training, and health systems, as well as in its transportation, communications, and energy sectors.

To view the team's findings in full, click here.

Nurture Microfinance to Prevent Conflict, DAIs Sam Kona Tells African Conference

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

The award of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunusfounder of Grameen Bank and a prominent advocate of microfinancedrew worldwide attention to the link between microfinance and conflict prevention.

E.S. Sam Kona, of DAIs new Kenya Transition Initiative Program, returned to that issue in a paper presented in Mombasa this month, where he argued that peacebuilding should be a primary goal of microfinance practitioners and institutions.
Kona spoke to students at the School of Applied Microfinance as part of a two-week course for managers, lenders, and others who facilitate financing for small businesses. Students from throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia attended.

Kona, an expert in the role of economics in stabilizing at-risk communities who is currently advising DAIs Kenya Access to Rural Finance Program, said the chances of conflict are lessened when a nations entrepreneurs are given a solid foundation on which to do business.

Among the factors that exacerbate local and regional tensions, said Kona, are economic decline, wide gaps between haves and have-nots, power-grabs for state resources, an abundance or scarcity of natural resources, and a disproportionate number of unemployed young people (the youth bubble).

Many of these factors can be mitigated by microfinance practitioners who contribute to and advocate for an improved and more equitable business climate, including efforts to create a fair economic playing field, push governments to support a broad-based business sector, champion ideas and enterprises that create jobs for young people, encourage businesses to work together instead of fighting each other, and discourage business that triggers illegal activities such as smuggling, trafficking, and corruption.

The School of Applied Microfinance teaches topics such as accounting and financial analysis, good lending and credit practices, marketing, product costing, and portfolio management.

DAI Board Elects James Boomgard as New CEO, Effective January 2009

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

At its September meeting, DAIs Board of Directors unanimously elected James Boomgard to succeed Tony Barclay as DAIs Chief Executive Officer, effective January 1, 2009.

The decision was announced this week by Board Chair David H. Gunning, who addressed several hundred of DAIs employee-owners at the companys Bethesda, Maryland office. Mr. Gunninga DAI Board member since the companys inception in 1970described the decision as the culmination of two years of deliberate succession planning and paid tribute to Boomgards proven leadership skills and commitment to DAIs long-held development mission.

I am honored by this decision, said Boomgard, a DAI employee since 1985. Thanks to Tony Barclays stewardship, DAI enters this transition at the very top of its game, with a healthy balance sheet, superb staff, and a record of delivering outstanding development results. We have the platform for delivering innovations for effective development well into the 21st century. My task is to ensure we capitalize on that legacy.

Boomgard has extensive experience in both corporate and project management. Having managed development programs in Washington and overseas, he was named a DAI Vice President in 1997, became Chief Operating Officer in 2005, and was appointed President in September 2006. He holds a B.A. in economics from Miami University, received a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Michigan State University, and completed the International Executive Program at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He and his wife, Mary, have two grown children, John and Elizabeth, and reside in Bethesda.

As President and CEO, Boomgard will have final executive responsibility for all aspects of DAIs performance: operational, financial, strategic, and marketing.

Current CEO Tony Barclay joined Mr. Gunning in saluting "Jim Boomgards energy and wisdom, and his appetite for continued learning and growth. Jim has built an outstanding management team, and I know that the company has a bright future under his leadership.

Recently selected as a finalist for the 2008 Government Contractor Executive of the Year Award, Barclay will continue to advise the DAI management team and serve on the Board of Directors. He will also lead a new DAI initiative to explore the creation of an open-source nonprofit affiliate for the diffusion of best practices in the global development community.

When he takes the reins on January 1, Boomgard will become only the third CEO in DAIs 38-year history. Founding CEO Don Mickelwait held the position until succeeded by Tony Barclay in 1999.

Summer Issue of Developments Newsletter Now Available

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

The summer issue of Developments covers a broad range of issues, from biodiversity conservation in Haiti and avian influenza control in Palestine to innovative enterprise programming in Afghanistan and geospatial planning for the next generation of knowledge management in international development.

In our lead article, Building the Right Road, Edwin Berk articulates DAIs approach to infrastructure projects, making the case that from a development perspective, building the right roadachieving development dividends commensurate with the infrastructure investmentsrequires building the appropriate enabling environment, in all its dimensions.

Writing from a country where infrastructure development is a pressing need and workforce development a related priority, Kami Rahbani and J. Wright show how the Afghanistan Capacity Development Program is aligning workforce efforts with the 3D (defense, diplomacy, and development) agenda. Also reporting from Afghanistan, Catherine Johnston describes how the Afghanistan Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Development Activity has launched various quick-impact, high-profile projects to generate momentum in the business community, including a televised entrepreneurial talent show modeled on American Idol.

Also in this issue:

Ingrid Ardjosoediro and Rich Magnani summarize the findings of a recent DAI workshop on agricultural value chain projects;

Christy Owen reviews DAIs experience scaling up biodiversity conservation efforts to the watershed level in Haiti and El Salvador;

Robert Bouvier and Andrew Watson discuss ongoing and potential applications of DAIs geospatial planning tools, including in the new global development commons;

Omar Al-Sahili describes how DAI overcame political and logistical roadblocks to build avian influenza prevention and preparedness capacity in the West Bank and Gaza; and

Rhiannon Gulick and Roisin Wisneski lay out the rationale for financial literacy programming and review some of the lessons learned from DAI projects active in this field.

Finally, in his regular column, CEO Tony Barclay reflects on the search for reconciliation and renewal in Kenya, and sees great promise in the early achievements of a U.S. Agency for International Development Office of Transition Initiatives project just under way there. And in the DAIdeas publication that accompanies this issue, Ulrich Ernst focuses on the emerging role of networks and network science as it relates to development, in everything from economics and finance to pandemic preparedness and democratic participation.

To view Developments online, click here. To view DAIdeas, click here. For print copies or to be added to our mailing list, contact Robert Salerno.

DAI Joins Public-Private Partnership for the Environment, Bethesda Green

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

Bethesda, Maryland-based DAI has become a founding member of Bethesda Green, a public-private partnership that seeks to reduce the communitys environmental footprint, attract environmentally conscious consumers, and promote an environmental ethic.

DAI has a vigorous practice in natural resource management and environmentally sustainable development, so we have a natural affinity for this kind of community-based endeavor, said Peg Hausman of DAIs Community Outreach Committee, which serves as the liaison with Bethesda Green. Making Bethesda a more sustainable place to live and work is in our interest as a company and as members of the Bethesda community.

DAI has been based in Bethesda for 18 of its 38 years and currently employs roughly 300 people in its Bethesda office. In addition to making a financial contribution, DAI is allowing a staff editor time to attend meetings of Bethesda Green and support its publications effort. Internally, the Community Outreach Committee is focusing initially on activities such as overhauling the companys recycling efforts.

Dave FeldmanChief Executive Officer of The Livability Project, LLC, and Implementation Director of Bethesda Greenwelcomed DAI to the partnership. We are delighted to be working with a firm of such long standing and high regard in our community, and we look forward to working with the company on a range of environmental initiatives.

For more information on Bethesda Green, click here.

DAI Welcomes Jamal Al-Jabiri, New Corporate Representative in Jordan

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

Jamal Al-Jabiri has joined DAI as its representative in Jordan, where he will lead DAIs efforts to expand its project portfolio in Jordan and neighboring countries.

Jamal joins DAI after a distinguished 11-year career with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Jordan, most recently as Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Opportunities. Before joining USAID, he worked for 10 years at The Housing Bank in Amman.

Jamal Al-Jabiri brings to DAI his firsthand knowledge of Jordan and the Middle East, a rich network of contacts in the local development community, and a fierce commitment to the development objectives at the core of DAIs mission, said DAI President Jim Boomgard. We are delighted that he has chosen to take the next step in his career with us, to help us deliver more and better development services in what is an increasingly important part of the world for DAI and our clients.

DAI has a long history of delivering development results in Jordan, and Jamal will take on the task of broadening and deepening DAIs client relationships still further. Working across clients and technical areas, he will be DAIs principal point of contact in Jordan, working shoulder-to-shoulder with DAI PalestineDAIs office in Ramallahin support of regional initiatives. DAI Palestine will provide the financial and other infrastructure support to assist his efforts.

In addition to his marketing and business acquisition responsibilities, Jamal will serve as a resource for in-country project implementation, collaborating closely with project leaders and home office support teams to bring added value to programs such as the Sustainable Achievement of Business Expansion and Quality Project (on which DAI is a subcontractor to BearingPoint, Inc.) and the Instituting Water Demand Management in Jordan Project (IDARA).

DAIs Miguel Baca To Discuss Latin American Tourism Development on CNN

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAIs Miguel Bacaan expert on sustainable tourism developmentwill appear on CNN en Español on September 10 to discuss tourism in Latin Americas protected areas.

Appearing on the television program En Efectivo, Mr. Baca will explore the issues surrounding entrance fees and how to administer them in a way that maximizes tourism-related revenue while protecting the region's natural and cultural resources.

DAI has an extensive record of promoting environmentally and culturally sensitive tourism in Latin America and in developing countries worldwide. For more information on DAIs work in the tourism field, contact Miguel Baca.

Tony Barclay Named as Finalist for Government Contractor Executive of the Year Award

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI Chief Executive Officer Tony Barclay was last night named a finalist for an award that recognizes the Government Contractor Executive of the Year.

The Greater Washington Government Contractor of the Year Awards are presented annually by the Northern Virginia Government Contractors Council (GovCon), the Professional Services Council, and Washington Technology magazine. Finalists for the 6th annual awards were announced in a ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

The Nominations Committee was flooded with truly outstanding applications nominating an extraordinary array of impressive companies, executives and government contracting professionals across the region, noted the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, which administers the GovCon Council. The Selection Committee had a most challenging task of identifying finalists from among the exceptional slate of candidates.

Tony Barclay has worked at DAI for more than 30 years and has been CEO since 1999, presiding over an unprecedented period of growth in DAIs business and diversification in its project portfolio. It is an honor to be nominated for this award alongside such distinguished executives in the professional services arena, he said.

Fellow nominees for Executive of the Year in the large company category (revenues greater than $300 million per year) were Paul Cofoni of CACI and Mac Curtis of Vangent, Inc. A full list of nominees in all award categoriesincluding Contractor of the Year and Public Sector Partner of the Yearis available at www.govconawards.com.

Winners in all three categories will be announced at an October 7 awards dinner.

DAI-Supported Conference Catalyzes SME Policy Reform in India

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EST

A DAI-supported conference has succeeded in building consensus on key reforms needed to expand financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India.

The conference focused on SME loan guarantees, which cover a certain portiontypically 50 to 90 percentof the loss to a bank from a bad SME loan, thereby enabling banks to experiment with SME lending with reduced risk, and ultimately deepening the financial markets available to SMEs.

As the implementing contractor on GTZs SME Financing and Development Program, DAI conceived of the Consultative Conference on SME Loan Guarantee Mechanisms and successfully worked with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to leverage their contribution: IFC funded an international guarantee specialist located by DAI, while USAID provided the basic funding for the conference and covered the expenses of international loan guarantee specialists identified by DAI.

Held in July, the two-day conference brought together Indian bankers and SME associations with the Reserve Bank of India and Indian ministry officials in Mumbai. On the first day, international specialists from loan guarantee programs in Korea and Malaysia discussed the lessons learned in their programs and summarized global best practices. Local DAI experts presented background papers on bankers and SMEs perspectives on loan guarantee programs, and made recommendations on Indias current SME loan guarantee regime.

On the second day, a smaller group of participants facilitated by a DAI specialist identified and prioritized the key reforms required. In the short-term, some of the more important proposed changes would enable the use of portfolio-based rather than loan-by-loan guarantees (greatly increasing the reach of the guarantee); allow guarantees to be made on loans granted by microfinance institutions (currently, only banks can use the guarantee); and permit banks to accept security on guaranteed loans (to reduce the risk of default).

In the longer term, said Don Greenberg, DAIs Team Leader, the government recognizes that the participation of the private sector as an investor and/or manager of SME guarantee mechanisms will take coverage of SMEs to a new level.

DAI will continue to facilitate the implementation of SME financing reforms through informal advocacy and technical assistance. DAI is also working on other financial sector reforms in India, including developing mechanisms to leverage risk capital for SMEs, creating a market for distressed SME assets, and improving the environment for factoring SME receivables.

For more information on DAIs financial sector work in India, contact Don Greenberg.

GIS Team Lead Bob Bouvier Addresses Seminar on the Global Development Commons

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Team Leader Bob Bouvier yesterday addressed a packed house eager to hear about the Global Development Commons (GDC). Part of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Summer Seminar Series, the event attracted some 130 participants representing 41 organizations, including businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and 8 USAID bureaus.

USAID Administrator Henrietta Fore introduced her vision of a GDC late last year. A high-profile effort to use technology to change the way development is done, revolutionize the way development knowledge is shared, and engage end users in ways that enable them to help themselves, the GDC has since been launched as a new activity within the DAI-implemented Global Development Alliance Strategic Support Program. In July, DAI hosted a two-day workshop to kick off the activity.

Yesterdays seminar panel was moderated by Wesley Wilson, Senior Advisor to Administrator Fore, and included:

Doreen Kagarama, First Secretary in the Rwandan Embassy;

Ntongi McFadyen, an independent consultant, who presented her findings on social networking at USAID, specifically the barriers to such networking and how to work around them; and

Al Hammond, Senior Entrepreneur in Residence at Ashoka, author of the The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid, who challenged the Agency and the development community at large to think more broadly about how technology reaches the poor.

DAI panelist Bob Bouvier, who gave a demonstration of DAIs GIS technology as applied in the field of avian influenza control, looked forward to playing an active role as the GDC team develops its technology strategy. I had the pleasure of introducing geospatial methods that foster development actor linkages in the context of time-sensitive zoonotic disease planning, he said, and providing a practical illustration of how the GDC can foster synergies at various levels of management to achieve a common goal.

To learn more about the GDC, click here.

DAI, ECIAfrica Participate in XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI was well represented at last weeks XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, which was attended by 25,000 people from 95 nations. DAIs participation included a poster developed by the ECIAfrica team that is providing HIV/AIDS policy and organizational support for the South African Football Players Union (SAFPU). ECIAfrica is DAIs Johannesburg-based subsidiary.

Funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the SAFPU program builds HIV/AIDS awareness among South Africas professional soccer players, equips them with the knowledge and skills they need to protect themselves against infection, and takes advantage of their standing in South African society to advance the HIV-mitigation agenda.

This workplace program reduces the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS by providing access to voluntary confidential counseling and testing services, sensitization training, and care and support services for players and their familiesincorporating international best practice in the context of South African law and the International Labor Organization code of practice on the management of HIV/AIDS in the workplace.

Energetically presented by Tebogo Tshiamo, SAFPUs General Secretary, the conference poster summarized the program and explained how its stakeholders hope to use the 2010 Soccer World Cup as a platform for an international HIV/AIDS campaign based on the SAFPU model.

The conferences theme, Universal Action Now, reflectsin the words of DAI delegates Louise Hogan and Robert Salernoa paradigm shift in the outlook of the global AIDS community, from seeing the pandemic as a short-term emergency to approaching it as a long-term challenge requiring a sustained focus on preventing HIV, building civil society capacity, and raising awareness of the linkages between HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health services, especially in reaching out to women and girls at risk of infection.

Health system strengthening (through increased HIV/AIDS funding) and economic strengthening for HIV-affected populations (a core strength of DAIs integrated approach to HIV/AIDS programming) will be critical to this sustained effort, they note.

DAI Urban Gardens Program Hosts High-Level U.S. Delegation to Ethiopia

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAIs Urban Agriculture Program for HIV-Affected Women (UAPHAW) yesterday hosted a high-level U.S. delegation led by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt.

The delegation presented UAPHAW Chief of Party Tesfaye Getachew with a certificate of appreciation commemorating the visit and recognizing the programs work as a partner with the people of the United States of America in providing better health to the people of Ethiopia.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, UAPHAW improves the incomes, livelihood possibilities, and nutritional status of HIV-affected women and orphans and vulnerable children, largely through the development of household nutrition gardens, a low-cost, non-labor-intensive urban gardening approach based on simple microdrip irrigation technology.

Secretary Leavitts delegation is visiting Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, and Mali to review cooperative efforts to reduce the spread of diseases including HIV/AIDS, malaria, and highly pathogenic avian influenza. Ethiopia and Ivory Coast are two of the 15 focus countries targeted by the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has contributed to UAPHAWs funding.

Secretary Leavitt and his delegationwhich included Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the HHS Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Tim Ziemer, the Presidents malaria coordinatorspent an hour and a half touring the urban gardens and visiting the people working on them. Accompanied by the Ethiopian Minister of Health and his team, they also attended a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

For more on UAPHAW and the success of the household nutrition gardens program, see Household Nutrition Gardens: A Timely Response to Food Insecurity and HIV/AIDS in Africa, recently published in The Africa Journal.

DAI Completes Fourth Civil-Military Training Course in West Africa

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI successfully completed its fourth civil-military training course in Accra, Ghana, as part of a year-long project in support of the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP). Conducted at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, the Trans Sahara Security Symposium followed similar civil-military training events in Ghana (November 2007), Nigeria (May 2008), and Senegal (June 2008), bringing together military representatives from Chad, Senegal, and Nigeria to share their experience of civil-military interactions in their home countries and on international missions.

The courses innovative curriculum challenges militaries to re-evaluate traditional strategies in the face of emerging threats such as overpopulation, competition for resources, and climate change. Exploring these new threats and their likely effects on national security, the interactive and discursive course debates how West African militaries can best position existing security forces to counter destabilizing trends such as unemployment, food shortages, and a disaffected citizenry.

A highly qualified team of African and U.S. civil-military and security experts deliver dynamic and interactive sessions that address the root causes and potential triggers of instability, unrest, and insurgency. The course provides a framework for understanding how civilian partnerships can advance national security objectives and suggests that civilian partnerships and pre-crisis civil-military relationships can support national security efforts to promote peace and stability.

Built around three key pillars of stabilitydevelopment, defense, and diplomacy (the 3Ds) these courses cover topics such as civilian authority and democracy; tribal, ethnic, and religious conflict; natural resource competition and management; response to disaster and emergency preparedness; refugees and displaced populations; lesser governed areas; poverty and development stagnation; conflict demographics and the youth bulge; vulnerable populations and child soldiers, including the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-combatants; extremist ideology; health issues, including HIV/AIDS and avian influenza; political access and the role of the military in a democracy; trafficking and other illicit networks; the rule of law; and the history of conflict in Africa and elsewhere.

The courses also provide an introduction to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations (with presentations by various locally operating NGOs), with specific insights on the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and the United Nations.

Under subcontract to Lockheed Martin Corp., and funded by Special Operations Command Europe, DAI led the week-long training with 34 participants hailing from Chad (24 officers), Senegal (9), and Nigeria (1). Local and international partners included the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Women Peace and Security Network - Africa (WIPSEN), and the United States Agency for International Developments Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

DAI Presents New Tool to Help Value Chains Cut Through Red Tape

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EST

On July 31, DAIs Bryanna Millis and Ulrich Ernst spoke to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) staff about a new tool that will help value chain projects identify, prioritize, and promote needed business environment reforms. Ms. Millis and Dr. Ernst discussed the new tool in their paper, "From Red Tape to Red Carpets: Enhancing the Competitiveness Impacts of Business Environment Reforms," presented at a Breakfast Seminar Series sponsored by USAID's Microenterprise Development office.

The Competitiveness Impacts of Business Environment Reforms (CIBER) tool was developed by Ms. Millis and Dr. Ernst with support from the USAID Microenterprise Development office. CIBER is a pragmatic, participatory, and action-oriented tool for assessing key impacts of the business environment on the competitiveness of value chains, appraising the benefits and costs (including political and administrative feasibility) of reforms, and promoting efforts to realize high-priority changes.

CIBER will help projects strategically rank the constraints to competitiveness, assess the political and administrative feasibility of proposed reforms, and develop and implement advocacy plans to support reform initiatives. DAI piloted CIBER in the cashew value chain in Brazil and has since used it to assess constraints to the non-timber forest products sector in Serbia.

To listen to the presentation and download the presentation, visit the MicroLinks website.

DAIs John Bowman Leads Ground-Breaking Activity in the Philippines for STOP AI

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:00:00 EST

Dr. John E. Bowman Technical Advisor to DAIs Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) Project led the team in conducting a simulation exercise for USAID/Philippines from July 21 to July 24. The exercise was carried out in collaboration with the National Avian Influenza Task Force, the Province of Pampanga, the Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture, and commercial poultry companies.

Participants from both the animal and human health sectors engaged in interactive learning exercises to evaluate their existing avian influenza (AI) response plans. This was the first time municipal, provincial, regional, and federal authorities met with the commercial sector to simulate a joint response to a hypothetical outbreak of AI at the local level.

The simulation included an indoor tabletop exercise in San Fernando, Pampanga, as well as a field drill conducted on a commercial poultry farm in Minalin a municipality that produces 1 million fresh eggs per day. Key lessons learned from this pilot exercise will be used in the development of a tabletop/field drill model to be replicated in other parts of the Philippines.

The Philippines remains free of AI, which has claimed hundreds of human lives and decimated poultry populations in many other Asian countries. This activity will improve the countrys capacity for preparedness and response in the event of an outbreak.

DAI Hosts Vision Team to Launch USAIDs Global Development Commons Initiative

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EST

Last week, DAI hosted a vision team of 18 technology and development practitioners at a two-day workshop to kick off an exciting U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) initiative called the Global Development Commons (GDC).

The visionaries offered insights into what will constitute success for the GDC and brainstormed potential pilot activities and partnership opportunities with private companies, foundations, other U.S. Government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations.

The GDC is USAIDs high-profile effort to use technology to change the way development is done and revolutionize the way development knowledge is shared. It aims to supercharge communities to do better development and engage end users in ways that enable them to help themselves.

USAID Administrator Henrietta Fore introduced her vision of a GDC late last year, challenging the development community to rethink how it uses technology in realizing the full potential of development work. The GDC is a new activity within DAIs Global Development Alliance (GDA) Strategic Support Program, led by Chief of Party Kristi Ragan and Deputy Chief of Party Melanie Oliviero.

The workshops main objectives were to identify GDC technologies and activities that can be catalyzed over the next three to four months through USAID partnerships and support. Demand-driven and quickly executable, these activities will contribute to solving development challenges in areas such as avian influenza and food security.

The GDC rollout will involve phased efforts to deliver tangible projects by the end of the year. It will prominently feature geographic information systems technology, a core DAI strength, and a highly interactive website that promotes coordination and engages users in developing countries. Additionally, it will include a competition that challenges technology innovators to find solutions to major development challenges, with the incentive of cash prizes and possible inclusion in a USAID project.

The DAI GDC team working on these issues for the next 10 months includes Rebecca Askin, Program Coordinator; Elizabeth Kountze, Alliance Outreach Specialist; and Seema Patel, Alliance and Management Specialist. To learn more about the GDC, click here.

British PM Gordon Brown and Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad Launch DAI Project

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EST

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad this week co-hosted an event bringing together 200 business leaders and government representatives from the United Kingdom and West Bank and Gaza at the Jacir Palace Hotel in Bethlehem.

At a July 20 ceremony, Douglas Pearce, Head of the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) Office in Jerusalem, inaugurated a new British initiative to support the Palestinian private sectorthe Facility for New Market Development (FNMD).

Managed by DAI, FNMD is a US$7.2 million grant-making facility for individual Palestinian enterprises and associated groups of companies that want to diversify their product range and enter new markets. The project is funded by DFID with backing from the World Bank.

Five Palestinian businesses from sectors including telecommunications, agribusiness, and manufacturing have already been awarded FNMD grants to co-finance product launch campaigns, product certifications, market research, and participation at trade shows. Prime Ministers Brown and Fayyad awarded grant certificates to these first five FNMD clients.

During his visit, Brown expressed his support for strengthening the Palestinian economy as a stepping stone toward improving the political and security situation in the region.

He announced an additional $60 million in economic aid to promote private sector activity and provide budget support to the Palestinian Authority. It was agreed to launch a Palestinian-U.K. Business Council and to organize a conference in the United Kingdom later this year to promote foreign direct investment in West Bank and Gaza.

Ulrich Ernst Assesses Doing Business Performance in MENA Countries, Focusing on Palestine

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI economist Ulrich Ernst has just completed a comparative study assessing how countries in the Middle East and North Africa region perform on the World Bank's Doing Business indicators, focusing in particular on Palestine.

Using detailed descriptions of the steps involved in calculating each of the indicators, Dr. Ernst explores how administrative changes can affect the overall ranking of the Palestinian economy. Simply by focusing on indicators that do not require lengthy legal and regulatory actions, the assessment concludes, the Palestinian economy could improve its ranking from 117 (out of 178 countries) to 78, a dramatic uptick of 39 places.

While this range is obviously only an indication of the possibleand also assumes that other countries do not reform at the same timeit should be remembered that the 2007 reform champion, Egypt, advanced by 26 places, said Ernst.

"This is a timely study because the Palestinian economy is opening up for new trade and investment partners," he added.

To read the study in full, click here.

Vietnam, USAID Agree To Deepen Collaboration by Extending STAR Program

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EST

Last week, Vietnamese cabinet minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Henrietta H. Fore signed a Memorandum of Intention (MOI) that will extend bilateral co-operation under USAIDs Support for Trade Acceleration Program (STAR). The Government of Vietnam and USAID now intend to extend the DAI-implemented program, originally slated to end in 2009, until 2011.

The ceremonial signing of the MOI was witnessed by Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem and hailed by the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung as an important step toward continued strengthening of bilateral ties.

Minister Phuc predicted that the much-heralded STAR programwhich develops the institutional and administrative systems needed to implement legal and regulatory changes associated with the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement and with Vietnams accession to the World Trade Organizationwould yield even more positive results in the future.

Administrator Fore cited STARs expansion as evidence of increasingly strong diplomatic and economic ties between the two nations, ties that were underscored by her July 4 ceremonial opening of USAIDs new Mission in Hanoi (previously, the Mission was a regional office managed by USAID's Regional Development Mission for Asia Office in Thailand).

In a press release describing Fores visit, USAID noted that Vietnam's efforts to establish a market-driven economyefforts to which STAR has been central for the past seven yearshave decreased poverty more than 30 percent among that nation's 84 million people.

Coca-Cola Partners With DAI and SAI on CULTIVAR Labor Standards Project

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EST

The Coca-Cola Company has agreed to partner with DAI and Social Accountability International (SAI) on the CULTIVAR project, a U.S. Department of Labor-funded effort to improve compliance with labor standards and thereby enhance agricultural competitiveness in Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic.

Given consumers growing preference for products that adhere to social and environmental standards, responsible labor practices are increasingly central to the competitiveness of Central American and Caribbean agriculture.

The Coca-Cola Company believes CULTIVAR offers it an ideal platform to advance its agenda of improving labor standards in Central Americas sugar sector, explained DAI political economist Samira Salem, who helped to broker the partnership. It also provides the company with access to a model it hopes to apply in other parts of Coca-Colas global supply chain.

DAI is a subcontractor to SAI on the four-year CULTIVAR project. Other private sector support for the CULTIVAR project includes Chiquita Brands International and Coop Italia.

DAI Recognized for its Support of Reservist Employees

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EST

The U.S. Department of Defense has presented DAI with a certificate of appreciation for outstanding service and continued support to the national defense effort. DAI was nominated for this honor by a DAI employee and member of the Army Reserve.

The Maryland Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve selected DAI to receive the prestigious Above and Beyond award, recognizing the companys commitment to ensuring that its employees are able to fulfill their obligations to national service.

DAI Vice President for Human Resources Cindy Limoges and Human Resources Director Bernadette Channer accepted the award at a June 26 ceremony.

"DAI is very proud to be honored in this manner by the Department of Defense, noted Ms. Limoges. Many of our employees have a strong ethic of public service, and we try to provide a supportive environment for them to contribute to their community, their country, and indeed countries all over the world. In this case we were delighted to support our employees commitment to service in the Reserve, and we look forward to continuing our positive relationship with the military."

DAIs John Bowman Addresses FAO Workshop on Avian Influenza

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EST

John E. Bowman represented DAI's Stamping Out Pandemic and Avian Influenza (STOP AI) Project at an international avian influenza workshop in Hanoi, Vietnam, from June 16 to 18.

Organized by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/Vietnam, the "Avian Influenza: Research to Policy" workshop was co-sponsored by FAO, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).

Dr. Bowman, as Technical Advisor to the USAID-funded STOP AI project, presented on "Certified Supply Chains for Safe Free Range Chicken in Vietnam." Bowman is managing this 18-month STOP AI activity in Vietnam in close collaboration with USAID offices in Bangkok and Hanoi, FAO, MARD, and the private sector.

Currently, highly safe chicken products are only available from industrial breeds raised in large processing facilities, but such breeds are out of favor with the consumer due to their poor taste and quality. Dr. Bowman presented a model in which Vietnam could develop alternative certified poultry supply chains that will produce a new, branded type of free range chickenusing local breeds attractive to consumersunder biosecure conditions on small to medium-sized farms.

DAI Participates in USAID Democracy and Governance Events

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EST

Two DAI staff members last week participated in U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-run democracy and governance events in Washington, D.C., including a session that DAI helped to organize concerning institutional cooperation around the nexus of defense, diplomacy, and development.

Joseph Siegle joined a USAID Democracy and Governance 2008 Partners Conference session examining why and how democracy supports broad-based economic growth, and Steven Rozner participated in a workshop addressing democratic and economic governance approaches to public procurement reform.

Mr. Rozners panel discussed the intersection between Economic Growth (EG) and Democracy and Governance (DG) programming at USAID's DG Officers' Workshop on June 10. He presented on public procurement, common EG and DG approaches to procurement reform, and the lessons learned in implementing those programs. The panel also featured topics including land rights, labor rights, and legal empowerment of the poor.

In his panel on June 12, Dr. Siegle reviewed the superior economic growth and development track record of low-income democracies relative to autocracies, noting that democracies also do a better job of avoiding calamity. Dr. Siegle highlighted the importance of institutions of accountabilitychecks on the chief executive, a meritocratic civil service, an independent private sector, the rule of law, and a free pressand how those institutions find more fertile ground in open, democratic societies.

In addition to Dr. Siegles and Mr. Rosners presentations, DAI proposed and helped organize a conference session titled The Three Ds and DemocratizationA Longer Term View. The June 13 session proposed political and bureaucratic strategies to encourage a broad array of U.S. government organizations to embrace democratization as a long-term process of sociopolitical change and institutional reform. The session stimulated discussion on how development practitioners can work to overcome internal political and bureaucratic obstacles to democratization.

For more information on the USAID Democracy and Governance 2008 Partners Conference, click here.

DAI Experts Help World Bank Judge Sustainable Agriculture Proposals

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EST

DAI agriculture specialists Christopher Reynolds and Heather Dale recently completed the first phase of their work as assessors for the World Banks 2008 Global Development Marketplace, a competitive grant program whose theme this year is "Sustainable Agriculture for Development." The Bank expects to award at least $4 million to winning proposals in September.

The Bank accepted grant proposals through March 21, then invited international development professionals from government agencies and international donors, the private sector, and academia to review the submissions, evaluate their viability, and choose the most impressive proposals for final selection.

Assessors were expected to have experience in linking small-scale farmers to input-output markets, improving land access and tenure for the poor, and promoting the environmental services of agriculture in addressing climate change and conserving biodiversity.

Reynolds and Dale served on selection panels for both the first and second round of evaluations, which met in early May and early June and winnowed the original 1,700 submissions down to approximately 100. The final round of selectionsemphasizing innovation, potential for growth, realism, sustainability, and results will take place over the summer, with the results announced September 24-25, 2008.

For more information on the program, click here.