- To improve the oversight and coordination of aid groups working in Haiti, all donations should be sent to a pooled fund that would be controlled by the Haitian government, writes Paul Collier, an economics professor at Oxford University and a former special adviser on Haiti for the United Nations. On a Foreign Policy magazine blog, he says that before the earthquake struck, charities provided much of the health care and education in the country, “yet they have been accountable neither to users nor funders.”
- Creating better teachers is key to improving America’s public-school system, writes Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in an opinion article in The Washington Post. She says federal and state governments, school districts, and teachers are starting “to coalesce around the goal of having an effective teacher in every classroom.”
- As states decide how to close massive budget gaps, arts groups can help secure government support by emphasizing not only the “intrinsic value of the arts” but also how they benefit the local economy and create a modern work force, says Tim Mikulski, director of state and local government affairs for Americans for the Arts. His views appear on the arts-advocacy organization’s blog.
- Can charities learn from their mistakes and make the fixes needed to help the people they serve? On the Aid Watch blog, Laura Freschi, associate director of the Development Research Institute at New York University, raises this question as she discusses PlayPumps, a water charity that received a lot of press attention. Recently it has had to shift strategy, in part due to criticism of how it operated.
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