News and Views from the Clinton Global Initiative

The Clinton Global Initiative now takes first place for me as a confab to attend. Like Davos it's about networking, but of course much more focused on development issues, and attended by as many if not more political, policy and NGO leaders from the developing world. Like the Aspen Ideas Festival it's about ideas, but with a focus on turning ideas into action. The action comes in the form of announced commitments to programs around the world from scores of individual and corporate donors and non-profit groups. The really big ones are announced by President Clinton himself. One example: a consortium of at least a dozen groups promised to bring schooling to the millions of children in conflict areas and refugee camps.The emphasis is mostly on commitments of money from rich people and corporate participants. But commitments of time and energy are not ignored. On behalf of CGD, I committed to see through to completion the creation of a new international institution: the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE), an idea that grew out of work led by CGD vice president Ruth Levine on closing the evaluation gap. The 3IE (read "Triple I E") will work to mobilize new financial and technical resources to help developing countries and donors learn through rigorous impact evaluations which solutions really work.Education was one of the four themes this year, along with health, poverty and climate change. These topics line up well with the CGD research agenda, and our work was much in evidence, on the Clinton Global Initiative's Web site and in the hallway discussions (see Jessica Pickett's post for a wrap up). I had the privilege of moderating a session on girls' education—which both inspired and frustrated me. Sister Cyril Mooney is an Irish nun who has run a school for girls in Calcutta for 30 years. Half the students are from the local slums; the other half are from affluent families who pay their way. Sakena Yacoobi of Afghanistan ran clandestine schools that served 8,000 girls during the Taliban era, and now manages, despite the security risks, to provide schooling for girls and health care for women in refugee and displaced person camps. Inspiring? No doubt.My frustration: They mostly described their programs without illuminating the constraints they cannot overcome without help from others. For the many private and business types in the audience, I fear that another description of another brave NGO somewhere "out there" may not be enough to trigger an individual response, let alone catalyze the collective action that is a hallmark of the Clinton Foundation's success (for an account of this approach, see the recent Atlantic cover story (subscription required)), complementing (I say immodestly) the organizing for rich country policy changes that CGD pushes. When I pressed the presenters in the panel discussion to state the constraints to their scaling up their amazing programs and leveraging their outstanding leadership, they didn't say "money"—not at first. They said: local engagement, local rules of the game, and local conditions (in the case of Afghanistan security, presumably from the resurgent Taliban). To me that means "policy" constraints that can be addressed with the help of outside money and influence—the piecemeal inputs that Bill Easterly favors (see my recent review of his new book) and the Clinton Global Initiative inspires!I was thrilled, indeed brought nearly to tears, that Vicky Colbert, who started Escuela Nueva in Colombia more than two decades ago, and a friend of mine and CGD—was one of the four people to receive the new Clinton Global Citizen Award. Escuela Nueva, now the model for schooling all over Latin America and beyond (including Uganda) is about radical changes in the way schooling works for the poor, emphasizing self-learning and high expectations, not the rote approach still all too common in the developing world.One thing is missing from the Clinton Global Initiative: A report on the progress of commitments made in 2005 and 2006. Were they fulfilled? And with what outcomes? It's not easy to imagine "monitoring" the givers, but a report made available to all participants that aggregates and illuminates, by sector, region, and mode of action (public-private partnerships for example), would be in the spirit of learning from experience. Let's hope that's on the CGI agenda next year.