A Wharton + World Bank Event this coming Monday, Dec. 1

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Mahmoud Mohieldin (World Bank) and David Shipman (Firmenich) will be joining us at the Wharton School for a presentation of Financing the Post 2015 Development Agenda and the Ideas for Action Initiative, and Sustainability with Passion, Talent and Integrity, respectively. We hope that registrants will be able to participate in this event.

The event will be live-streamed for the first 300 viewers. During the event, you have the chance to ask a question directly to the presenters through Twitter. All you need to do is write your questions to @2015_ideas. We will collect all questions and answer as many as we can at the Q&A session following the presentations.

Learn more about the event here. Click here to be directed to the live-stream video. Click here to view the powerpoint Mohieldin will use in today’s presentation.

Monday, December 1, 2015, 3:00 – 6:00 PM EST

Another update – The World Bank published on their Today Story regarding our joint initiative. You can download the document in PDF form.

We’re excited about all the recent activity. We hope you rest well this weekend and give many thanks. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Updates

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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!

The Youth Dialogues: Short Recap

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Yesterday, thousands of visitors joined in the Youth Dialogues to discuss finding innovative financing solutions for the Post-2015 agenda.

According to the WB live report, 714 unique visitors watched the event online and there were 1,117 unique visitors to the page. According to the WB Live team these are good numbers. Online visitors represented a wide range of countries – top 10 being USA, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, UK, Peru, India, Canada, Nigeria.

Click here to see the flyer for the event. Click here to watch the video in full.

Youth Dialogues: Post-2015 Agenda

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The Youth Dialogues: Post-2015 Agenda

On Thursday, November 6, at 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET, you can watch the live stream of the Youth Dialogues, an event held by the World Bank and the WGB Youth2Youth Community. The event is a conversation that will engage young development professionals on the post-2015 agenda and its importance for the youth today.  Through an engaging presentation and discussion the event will highlight their active role and encourage open dialogue and action between all involved.  In addition, the event will host the launch of the Ideas for Action competition.

The participants can tweet, ask questions and comment on it as they watch. We hope you can participate in watching the event.

Read more about the event and share your views here: wrld.bg/DRFWT

Some Recent Updates

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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

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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!

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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.