Understanding Autoresponder And Function

Rabu, 24 Oktober 2012

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Results-based Approaches to Aid

16 October 2012. Public and political pressure on budget allocations, coupled with the genuine need to make aid more effective to tackle the global poverty crisis, have resulted in a renewed focus on results. Several donors are promoting the use of aid to reward the achievement of predetermined performance targets. Though this is a recent trend, in 2010, total disbursements for results-based approaches broke the $5 billion barrier.

Eurodad examined the following six major results-based initiatives and assessed their performance against four key internationally agreed aid effectiveness principles: ownership; accountability and mutual accountability; harmonisation; and alignment and use of country systems. We also examined whether they had a ‘broad’ scope or a ‘narrow’ one, in terms of: how specific the objectives are; the level of funding (from national to local); and the flexibility with which the recipient can use the money.

The European Commission’s Millennium Development Goals Contract (MDG-C).
The GAVI Alliance (GAVI) Health System Strengthening support and Immunization Services Support (due to their similarities both initiatives have been these two initiatives have been depicted together in the tables examining their alignment with aid effectiveness principles.).
The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) Threshold and Country Programs.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM).
The Global Partnership for Output-Based Aid (GPOBA).

The main findings of this research are:

In general, results-based approaches are not particularly good at supporting aid effectiveness principles, with the exception of the MDG-C. However, broader approaches do appear to be better aligned with aid effectiveness principles.
Ownership tends to be higher when the responsibility for designing programmes falls on recipient governments. This does not mean that donor led approaches such as the MCC cannot achieve significant degrees of ownership, but results are likely to be less consistent, have higher costs and impose a significant burden on host governments and civil society.
Results-based approaches tend to reinforce accountability to donors and in doing so, undermine mutual accountability. In general, the problem is less acute with country wide initiatives and it is most pressing when working through third party service providers.
The level of harmonisation of results-based approaches is low because of their widespread use of parallel structures. Donor harmonisation seems to be higher the broader the approach, with the MDG-C being the best performer.
Only two of the approaches examined in this report use country systems to a significant extent: MDG-C and GAVI. Even in these cases there are significant eligibility and public financial management criteria that influence and limit the type of country systems that recipient countries can implement.

In addition to these concerns, one of the most important findings is that there is little evidence or evaluation of the strengths, weaknesses and impacts of different results-based approaches. Therefore, it seems reasonable to use results-based approaches with a degree of caution.

Read the full report: Hitting the Target? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Results-based Approaches to Aid

Promoting Responsible Agricultural Investments in Africa

October 22, 2012. Washington, D.C. Increased interest in public and private investments in the African agricultural sector has raised concern over how such investments will benefit smallholder farmers.

This discussion explored how best to develop “responsible investments” that are profitable for international private investors as well as for local farmers, businesses and governments. As part of a series of conversations that the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa has launched in the U.S. and Africa, the event helped define and identify appropriate models that promote responsible investments in Africa.

Go straight to the second panel @ 1h18 minutes
Moderator – Mima Nedelcovych, Partner, Schaffer Global Group
• Promoting Inclusive Agricultural Investments That Benefit Smallholder Farmers
– Katie Campbell, Senior Policy Analyst, ActionAid
• Forging Effective Public-Private Partnerships to Facilitate Responsible Agricultural
Investments
– Matthew Armah, COO, Millennium Development Authority, Ghana
• Making New Private Sector Investments Work for African Agriculture
– Njack Kane, CEO, Novel Commodities, Geneva
• Encouraging Responsible Private Sector Investments in the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition
– Paul Weisenfeld, Assistant to the Administrator, Bureau for Food Security, USAID

The Role of ICTs in Addressing Climate Change in Ghana

17-21 September 2012. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has released a report titled “Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: The Case of Ghana,” which focuses on the question: How can developing countries effectively integrate ICT tools within climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies?

The report was officially launched at the second ITU Green Standards Week held in Paris, France.

Using Ghana as a case study, the report presents the potential of ICTs to contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation, and provides concrete lessons learned and makes practical suggestions aimed at developing country decision makers and practitioners.

[Publication: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: The Case of Ghana]

Role of Smallholders at Kenya’s Agricultural Development Forum

President Kibaki urged youth to engage in

agriculture during the 3rd Agricultural
Sector Development Forum

14-17 October 2012. The 3rd Agricultural Sector Development Forum took place from , in Nairobi, Kenya and focused on: "Moving towards agribusiness for a globally competitive agricultural sector." The Development Forum is the highest decision-making platform in the national sectoral coordination framework.

Bringing together 10 ministries that address agriculture and rural development, the meeting sought to: review progress of sector strategies in the four years since the last conference; benchmark actions against initiatives of other countries; share stakeholder experiences on meeting the Kenya Vision 2030; and launch new sector strategies.

The meeting included sessions on adapting to drought conditions, sustainable development for smallholder agriculture, coordination with local governments, and the role of the private sector.

At Kenya's strategic sectoral meeting on agriculture, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) stressed the role of smallholder farmers in economic development and food security. It also underscored the importance of access to markets and increasing resilience to environmental and financial challenges, and noted its work in scaling up sustainable and climate-smart agriculture approaches worldwide, particularly in Kenya.

[Agricultural Sector Development Forum Agenda]

Advocacy Toolkit on ARD

The CIARD partners announced the new Advocacy Toolkit on “Opening Agricultural Knowledge for All”, which is offered to organizations and individuals in support of their efforts to raise awareness, advocate, and influence others.

The Toolkit is aimed at researchers, scientists, managers, and information/communication professionals with an interest in opening up agricultural knowledge. The Toolkit is published in wiki format, with the intention that it will be enhanced and developed by CIARD partners and stakeholders.

There are pages on designing approaches, selecting targets, building a case methods and tools, using evidence to support advocacy, and some case studies.

1.Advocacy: What & Why
2. Advocacy: When & Where
3.Strategic Approach
4.Target selection
5.Methods and Tools
6.Top 10 tips
7. Building the case
8. Evidence to use
9.Examples/Cases
10.References

This Toolkit was prepared with input from various CIARD partners, and particularly the CGIAR, FAO, GFAR, and the regional research forums in Asia/Pacific (APAARI), and Latin America and the Caribbean (FORAGRO/IICA), and the Near East (AARINENA).

Policy Brief: Using ICT to enable Agricultural Innovation Systems for Smallholders

18 October 2012. The World Bank, in collaboration with the e-Agriculture community and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), held in September a two week online forum.

This e-forums stem from the launch of the World Bank's ICT in Agriculture e-Sourcebook (2011) and the growing demand for knowledge on how to use ICT to improve agricultural productivity and raise smallholder incomes. The following summary captures the discussion during the most recent e-forum. The text is derived strictly from the participants' posts during the forum and does not reflect the views of the World Bank or FAO.

The potential of ICT to support the access to and exchange of information for smallholder farmers is clear. A rich discussion centred on examples of current pilots and processes expected to bring beneficial results. It must be noted, however, that there continues to be a challenge in finding examples that have moved beyond the pilot stage, reaching scale in a sustainable manner.

eAg_Sourcebook_4_Oct2012.pdf

Senin, 22 Oktober 2012

Math on Mondays

Well I'm going to try something new here on Savvy Teaching Tips.

Welcome to Math on Mondays.

I love, love, love teaching primary math. It's so much fun and there are so many fun games you can play with the kids. And the kids usually love these too.

Before I start with today's topic, I just wanted to give you a basic (very basic) overview of what the most important parts of the curriculum are here in BC.

I'm sure they are very similar to the Common Core goals in the U.S.

About 5 or 6 years ago, our math curriculum changed dramatically here in BC. Now the focus has changed from simply getting the correct answer, to explaining HOW you got the answer you did.

Things got really vocabulary heavy overnight.

You need to know the math vocabulary to explain your thinking clearly. Well, I teach in an area of around 75%- 80% English as a Second Language learners. We call them ELL here in Vancouver.

That means there needs to be a lot of time for the children to 'play' and use the language that they are learning. We call it "Talking the Math" or "Using Math Words".

Of course, GUIDED play is what I mean.

So today I thought I'd give you some steps that I use with my students to achieve guided play. Because, really, by Grade 2, they should be able to use manipulatives as learning tools more than playthings.

So on to Today's Topic.

JUNK JOBS.

What is junk??? Well, you could actually call it Re-Using - remember the 3 R's of Recyling.??

Basically I use whatever I can save until I have enough to make a jar of 'Junk'.

I used to teach at an Inner City school where the parents did not have a lot of money to donate to the school and the PAC (PTA) did not really exists at all. So what that meant is that I needed to get resourceful and collect whatever I could to make tubs of manipulatives. You can also ask the parents to donate things from home. I'll explain more about this later on in this post.

When I first introduce the junk to the class I usually sit them all in a big circle on the carpet, but my class is too big for my carpet this year, so I need to get them to work at their tables. I give the children a few minutes to play with the junk they have. Then I give them a task like make a pattern. I leave it really open-ended at first. Some kids just want to play, and if they don't do my

task the first day, that's OK. Every 5 minutes or less we rotate around to the next seat and use that Junk.

It takes about a week, but the kids really need to get that touchy-feely stuff out of their systems.

And after a while we can get down to learning some concepts with this junk.

Also, the best thing about this Junk is it's free.

And another great thing about it is that it is mostly objects that the kids see in their daily lives, so it helps them make connections between concepts and the world around them.

Here's a sampling of some of the "JUNK" in my classroom collection.