Deadlines are near!

Submissions are due Jan. 31 – If you haven’t done so already, send us your proposals to ideasforaction2015@gmail.com. Best of luck!

Info Session

UPDATE: For those who weren’t able to view the info session held last week, the video is now available here: http://streaming2.worldbank.org:8080/vvflash/SEM1/

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With one month left before the deadline for submissions, we bring you an informational session from the World Bank on Thursday (1/8/2015) at 2:00pm – 3:00pm EST.

The event will be live streamed through the following links:
World Bank Group Page: http://streaming2.worldbank.org:8080/vvflash/extlive4/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvJt8pFe-wU

After taking a few minutes to give an overview of the competition from the World Bank and Wharton, we will open up the floor for a Q&A session. During that time, we want to answer any questions you may have about the competition. Before you tune into the live streams, post your questions on our Facebook, or on Twitter to have them answered during the session. Interact with us – this is your chance to get your burning questions answered!

Holiday Season

Hello Everyone!

The days are winding down and the holidays are upon us. We hope you are taking this time to take a much deserved break from a very busy year. And after a short break, take this time to perfect your proposals!

2014 is the year we started this annual competition. In our first year, we have made countless edits to the guidelines, sent hundreds of emails dedicated to announcing the competition to various networks, and spent hours into the night thinking of how we can maximize the efficiency of this process for you. As much as we are excited about this competition, we want to make this exciting for thousands of people all over the world. We want to see millions of young people contribute their ideas to the World Bank, ideas that come from experiencing first-hand financing sustainable development and witnessing first-hand the areas of our world that need development. It has been good to see interest from those studying at Wharton and Insead, and we also loved seeing interest from those in Zambia, Colombia, Palestine, Pakistine, Kuwait, Uganda, and more. Now we near the holidays, but we are also running out of time before deadlines for submissions on 1/31. Waste no time to register for the distribution list and separately register your team for the competition. As always, we are here to answer your questions at ideasforaction2015@gmail.com.

Some important items to note:

Guidelines are now available in French and in Spanish.

Information session will be held on Thursday, January 8, 2015 at 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST at the World Bank Headquarters. The session will also be accessible online.

Feature on Wharton IGEL website.

Follow the Post-2015 Development Agenda Process.

The Synthesis Report of the Secretary-General on the Post-2015 Agenda

UNIDO: Consolidated Report on the 2014 Consultations, Engaging with the Private Sector in the Post-2015 Agenda

IEAG’s Data Revolution Report to the Secretary-General, ‘A World that Counts.’

Updated Guidelines

Hello Everyone!

We have been receiving similar questions asking for clarifications to the guidelines, so we cleaned it up so as to clear up any confusion. You can see the new guidelines in PDF format here. Additionally, there is a new look to our competition page! Email us any further questions at ideasforaction2015@gmail.com.

Best of luck,

the I4A team.

Implementing a transformative development agenda – key questions ahead of 2015 Addis Ababa Financing Conference

Here at Wharton this past Monday, we were grateful to host Mahmoud Mohieldin (World Bank) to speak on financing the post-2015 development agenda and David Shipman (Firmenich) to speak on Passion, Talent, and Integrity. Their talks were thought-provoking, passionate, and left our minds alive with ideas. To all those who were able to attend the live-stream, we were glad we could hear your questions, and we appreciate your participation. To those who weren’t able to attend, you can watch the full Mohieldin talk here, and see pictures here.

As you prepare your proposals, you may want to keep up with the different voices speaking up about the agenda and the SDGs. Below is a post written by Leah Worrall (European Report on Development) and Dirk Willem te Velde (ODI) where they discuss their progress and some questions in light of the Addis Ababa conference. You can find more blogs like this through our twitter feed. Our Twitter is always updating with new videos, articles, and blogs you can use to hear what others have to say about the post-2015 mevelopment agenda and the MDGs.

As always, please reach out to us on email or twitter if you have any questions. If you need to recruit team members, comment on our blog to reach out to others. Make use of the comment functionality of our blog to speak to us or one another.

With only two months left before submission deadlines, we hope you are all as excited as we are. We look forward to the fantastic ideas ahead of us!

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From Business Fights Poverty:

In September 2015, the international community is expected to agree an ambitious post-2015 development agenda (the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs) to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aiming to combine economic, social and environmental objectives in a balanced manner. At the same time there will be a financing for development conference in Addis Ababa in July 2015 which will discuss the means of implementation framework. A range of reports released this year are helping to frame the discussions. In August, the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts onSustainable Development Financing (ICESDF) discussed its recommendations. In September the New Climate Economyreported on green growth. This week’s OECD Development Co-operation Report is the latest to discuss financing for development.  This blog reviews the progress made so far in the context of the ongoing work for the European Report on Development (ERD) 2014/15 and concludes by formulating three questions we should be asking ahead of the Addis conference.

First let’s look at some history. The discussion that framed the implementation of the 2002 Monterrey Consensus on financing for development focused primarily on mobilising resources for development, and less on the effective use of finance. The approach was to estimate ‘finance needs’ to meet the MDGs, which we know are subject to significant variation under different models and underlying assumptions (including policy context considerations). The focus of the international community was on raising levels of ODA for specific social goals, which whilst vital also distracted the international community from considering the range of flows and complementary policies for a much broader sustainable development transformation.

So what do the reports say this time around? The OECD Development Co-operation Report released this week provides an important overview of the various sources of finance available for sustainable development financing and asks where the financial resources for the SDGs will come from. Policy considerations are woven throughout the report, although a more practical analysis of policies in the context of reaching SDGs would have merited further elaboration. A key contribution of the report is in recognising the importance of “catalytic use of ODA”, for example, in raising domestic resources (through domestic tax reform) or using development finance institutions to mobilise other resources including private sources. It also includes an innovative (finance) target of a 2% of GDP for international co-operation on global public goods.

The ICESDF report reviews four types of finance that can be geared towards development – domestic, international, public and private. There is a brief overview of finance needs but warns that “quantifying needs is complex and necessarily imprecise”.  Key areas of policy reform are presented for each of the categories of finance. These are a useful first step in discussions on a beyond-finance implementation agenda. This analysis could have been strengthened by drawing out lessons from country case studies and other evidence on the policies towards creating an enabling environment for sustainable development.

The New Climate Economy report, rather than starting from the point of view of finance flows, instead focuses on the goal of achieving lasting economic growth whilst also tackling the risks of climate change. The world will be undergoing transformation over the next 15 years and beyond, so how do we shape our economies in light of climate change? The role for finance and policy is woven into a storyline on raising resource efficiency, innovation and infrastructure. After transformations in labour and capital productivity, the next step will be to transform resource efficiency through effective policy and investment decisions (see also the ERD 2011/12 addressing resource efficiency). When dealing with infrastructure, the report further argues that: “Investment is hardly constrained by a shortage of savings”. After all some US$ 17 trillion of global investment is financed each year and part of this could be directed towards delivering the SDGs, including through infrastructure investment. The crucial question then relates to the effective mobilisation and use of finance flows through appropriate policy.

In preparing the ERD 2014/15 on finance and other means of implementation in a transformative post-2015 context, we turn the financing agenda up-side down. Instead of focusing on the supply side of finance, we take the transformation objectives (economic, social and environmental) as a starting point, and then examine how finance fits in. Further we focus on the effective use and mobilisation of finance. This approach targets four types of “enablers”, without which sustainable development is not feasible: institutions, resources (such as infrastructure or human and natural capital), technology and networks. The research examines the links between finance and policies in developing enablers for sustainable development.

This approach yields interesting insights. For example, ERD evidence from Tanzania suggests that whilst there was private sector interest in renewable energy, the complementary policies were not in place to scale-up investments in renewable energy. By contrast, a better regulatory framework in Kenya has allowed faster diffusion of renewables. In Mauritius, appropriate capacity and institutions (including the Joint Economic Committee that strengthened links between state and business) to design and implement a strategic agenda attracted the finance necessary for economic transformation. Hence, the enabling environment was the catalyst for finance, rather than the other way around. For more on these case studies, see our article from last month.

Global policies, rather than finance in isolation, are also essential for sustainable development transformation. For example, the removal of fossil fuel subsidies (at US$ 550 billion in 2010) and an international agreement on climate change at theUnited Nations climate conference in Paris in December this year would reduce the need for additional finance. If a global agreement was reached on trade facilitation, this would be worth just as much as the value of Aid for Trade which is currently being directed to developing countries. Better global banking rules would also help to avoid future financial crises and enhance the volumes and stability of international private finance.

Taking this together, we argue that the international community should be asking the following three priority questions ahead of Addis Ababa:

1. Until recently, we have been asking “where is the finance coming from”? Instead we should be asking how can countries individually and globally create the conditions (through policies and enablers) to attract the various finance flows available for achieving sustainable development objectives? The Tanzania, Kenya and Mauritius are just some of the ERD examples showing that complementary policies matter from mobilisation and effective use of finance.
2. Over the last decade we have been focused on mobilising ODA to fill estimated finance gaps, but instead we need to be asking how can international public finance best contribute to the enablers of transformative change? For example,ODI work in Uganda suggests that renewable energy investments by DFIs can transform the domestic economy and create jobs.
3. Globally, caution is required before jumping on an aid-for-global-public-goods- bandwagon. Finance (e.g. beyond-aid) can also contribute, and a priority question is how can a reformed international system (e.g. trade, climate, tax rules) contribute?

The ERD 2014/15 is asking these and other questions and is gathering evidence towards answering them.

Updates

Hello everyone! We are about a month away from releasing the prompt, and a couple months away from the deadline for submissions. So far, we have about 500 registrants and a handful of teams signed up, and we hope more people register as time nears.

If you haven’t already, follow us on Twitter to stay in the know of competition details. We will also release tips and questions that will spark ideas and guide you in structuring your proposals. We want to make #ideasforaction an active topic of discussion. If you’re on Twitter, give us a shout-out, introduce yourselves, introduce your ideas, and engage with us!

Our partner YABT has created a video promoting the competition in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Watch and share the videos with your Portuguese and Spanish speaking networks:

Spanish: http://youtu.be/Wt5NWNh65uw

Portuguese: http://youtu.be/PrEFvp9kIxk

English: http://youtu.be/3N3ZOh-HZXk

The Stockholm Environment Institute will host an upcoming seminar: What Could the Sustainable Development Goals Mean for Sweden and Europe? This seminar will be held on November 27th with representatives of civil society, the Swedish government, and the European Commission. The event will be livestreamed. Read more about the event here.

In the next couple weeks, we will begin posting information to aid in addressing each of the pillars of the competition. Stay tuned!

We are excited for you all to share your ideas with us. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and we’ll talk to you soon!

New Resource

If you haven’t already looked at the resources page, we have added a new powerpoint to the list:

Financial Sector Challenges and Opportunities in Africa

Inside you’ll find information about the state of finance in Africa. We hope it will be useful to you.

Some Recent Updates

We have decided to move the dates for one month – to avoid any conflict in schedules for school or the holidays. The new dates are as follows:

Competition prompt released to teams by end of December, 2014

Deadline for Submissions: January 31, 2015

Finalists Announcement: March 2, 2015

Winner(s) Announced: March 30, 2015

We are also pleased to announce the Youth to Youth community as our newest partner. The Youth to Youth (Y2Y) Community is a network of young people around the world aiming to channel fresh ideas and perspectives into development and to engage, inspire and empower youth in making a difference in their communities and beyond. We look forward to forthcoming activities with Y2Y.

Lastly, the following are the latest materials provided by the World Bank in regards to Financing for Development.

Introduction to the Proposal of the Open Working Group for Sustainable Development Goals

Financing for Development: Supporting Countries to Achieve their Sustainable Development Goals

The Post-2015 Global Agenda: A Framework for Country Diagnostics 

Report of the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing 

Responses to this Week’s Pre-Competition Question on Aid Delivery

Thank you for emailing in your responses to “what aid delivery models do you think are poised to make an outsized impact in the next 5 years”! We’d like to share a couple of them with you to help you think about possible topics to address when the competition question is released next month.

 

Feel free to comment on this post or send in additional thoughts to ideasforaction2015@gmail.com

 

Response from Kat Muller, Monitor Deloitte, New York City (USA)

Outcomes-based aid is somewhat of a hot topic right now, but in my opinion, certainly qualifies as innovative and as having the potential to make an outsized impact in the development space. I suppose it’s more about development financing than aid delivery, but I’m going with it.

Outcomes-based aid is essentially any arrangement where payment is dependent on or linked to the delivery of pre-defined outcomes. The approach is also called “cash on delivery” aid or “payment for success;” social impact bonds are a well-known example. Essentially, this approach is structured to offer several benefits: reducing risk for public funders while increasing accountability; providing further investment opportunities to socially-minded investors; allowing service providers to decide how to seek results (as opposed to traditional aid which is often provided with strict programmatic direction from often far-away donors); and providing incentive and funding for preventive interventions to be implemented, whereas public budgets for preventive interventions might be cut in favor of aid directed at already-ailing populations.

The concept is certainly exciting, and excitement around the concept may just be renewed after the recent (Aug 2014) announcement that the first results of the first-ever social impact bond, directed at reducing recidivism in Peterborough Prison in the UK, imply program success (8.5% reduction in recidivism compared to a control group) and a pending positive return for investors.

Like any approach, outcomes-based aid is not without its challenges. It has seen relatively slow pick-up, for a number of reasons: gathering a group of stakeholders interested in the relatively complex arrangement is difficult; agreeing upon and measuring outcomes, not to mention determining causation of outcomes, is difficult; finding investors willing to take on the risk of such arrangements is difficult; and, as implicitly acknowledged by the purpose of the Ideas for Action competition, the people in charge often like to stick to what they know. That said, I’m hopeful that given the well-documented growing interest in impact investing, the work being done by DFIs and foundations to support the aid ecosystem, and the success of the first social impact bond, that the outcomes-based approach will be highly impactful in the coming decade.

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Response from Will Docimo, Deloitte, Washington DC (USA)

An issue facing development is the lack of private investment. One potential would be public/private partnerships funded by the Bank. This venture would allow for private companies to train and employ local talent for local needs. With funds from the Bank, investment risk would be diminished and allow for new technologies to be utilized by within the community. An example of this would be mHealth.

Ideas for Action Kick-Off: we want to hear from YOU!

Ned Shell, young professionals organizing leader for Ideas for Action (IFA), kicks things off by asking you to comment on what recent innovations in aid delivery models you think are poised to make a big impact in the next 5 years. Email us at ideasforaction2015@gmail.com and we will post online your thoughts and opinions. Your responses can range from a few sentences to a couple of paragraphs. If you’d like credit on our website for your response, make sure to include your name, company/institution, and location in the email.

Every 1-2 weeks we will ask new questions that relate to the topic(s) your competition teams will eventually need to tackle when the question is released. Don’t wait for the competition to get involved – start thinking about the issues now and share them with other IFA participants by emailing us.