We in the development community often talk about our work as being “demand-driven” and “empowering local agents.” There is widespread consensus that importing so-called “international best practices” is an approach that proved largely unsuccessful in the past. But how do you operationalize doing problem-driven, locally owned work? We at IBI are using an approach developed by the Harvard Center for...

Introductory and advance gender and social inclusion (GESI) online icourses

Timor-Leste: Customs Reform Project

Since 2017, USAID/Timor-Leste’s Customs Reform Project (CRP) has been working with the Government of Timor-Leste (GOTL) Customs Authority (CA) and private sector stakeholders to provide support for trade facilitation and domestic resource mobilization. With limited domestic farming and manufacturing infrastructure, Timor-Leste is heavily reliant on trade for the...

Earlier this year, the world was shaken by the emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which has affected more than 215 countries all over the world. The emergence of a global pandemic has led countries and states to adjust priorities to make public health central to their international development efforts. In Southeast Asia, as in the rest of the world, coronavirus has not only had a major...

This spring, IBI welcomed three new members to their team. I was lucky enough to be one of them. The current COVID-19 pandemic makes starting and supporting new positions complicated. IBI, however, has experience working in trying circumstances because of their development work during the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Liberia. They have used these experiences to create a welcoming environment even now, i...

The USAID-funded Strengthening Local Organizations (SLO) project, implemented by IBI, has reached the mid-way point of its second year. The project works to build the capacity of 10 Salvadoran CSOs spanning all stages of organizational development. And, in just a year-and-a-half, it has earned a reputation for providing the kind of high-caliber, individualized support that beneficiary CSOs had bee...

Despite the country’s best efforts, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit El Salvador as it has hit almost everywhere else. The IBI-implemented Strengthening Local Organizations (SLO) project has already felt the impact, having to cancel a half-dozen in-person workshops scheduled for March and early April for safety reasons.

In these difficult times, however, SLO has an advantage: early on, the project cre...

France’s President Emmanuel Macron believes “the coronavirus pandemic will transform capitalism” and says that “it’s time to think the unthinkable”[1]. While this statement may seem extreme, it communicates a sense of urgency and a new reality we find ourselves in.  For those of us involved in the delivery of foreign aid, is it also time to rethink the paradigm of development assistance?

The curren...