2011 Annual Report: Year in Review
2011: Year in Review
InterAction met several challenges in 2011, including grave threats to development accounts in the federal budget and a massive drought in the Horn of Africa. Other core areas included humanitarian reform, G8 and G20 summit advocacy, the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, and work on innovative partnerships for the NGO community.
Crisis Response
When the earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated parts of Japan in March 2011, InterAction responded by coordinating a Crisis Response List, a webpage that showcased which InterAction members were responding to the crisis. For the first time, the Obama administration directed potential donors to the Japan tsunami response to InterAction’s website. We worked closely with our Japanese counterpart, JANIC, to coordinate our members’ response. Our work led to significant media coverage on the issue of donating responsibly, which has further led to our work with the Ad Council and Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI) to develop a toolkit on the topic, to be released in summer 2012.
Later in 2011, as the worst famine in decades unfolded in the Horn of Africa, InterAction was actively engaged on many fronts. Our Horn of Africa Working Group regularly met, we participated in video calls with the world’s humanitarian coordination body, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), and collaborated closely with USAID and other parts of the U.S. government. Once again, USAID referred people who wanted to donate to InterAction’s Crisis Response List.
Working closely with USAID and the Ad Council, InterAction helped develop a public service ad campaign, Famine-War-Drought (FWD), on the extent of the emergency in the Horn of Africa, with the idea that concerned Americans could “forward” information about the emergency and thereby build greater awareness, resulting in a greater public response to the crisis.
InterAction also engaged multiple branches of the U.S. government on the issue of restrictions on humanitarian assistance to Somalia that resulted in a measure of improvement: the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control agreed to grant a license to USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) to provide assistance inside Somalia. This was used as an umbrella permit for OFDA NGO partners to respond to the crisis, enabling them to use their own privately-raised funds as well.
UN humanitarian reform
InterAction has been actively engaged in several aspects of UN humanitarian reform. We have participated in the process being led by UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos to improve the collective response to large-scale emergencies. Specifically, InterAction worked with other NGO consortia to develop minimum standards for participation in clusters in emergencies and a proposal for NGO participation in the Humanitarian Country Teams. The process culminated in agreements on specific changes in the humanitarian architecture that were approved by the IASC principals in December.
We also collaborated with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on recommendations to improve overall accountability of humanitarian agencies, and with the UN Fund for Population Activities on recommendations to improve the functioning of the Working Group of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. As noted above, we also worked with the International Council of Voluntary Agencies and the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response to develop criteria for participation in coordination structures at the country level in large-scale emergencies.
In 2011, InterAction initiated a quarterly dialogue with senior staff of OFDA and the State Department’s refugee and international organizations bureaus on UN humanitarian reform. Discussions focused on steps the U.S. can take to influence the UN to choose more effective humanitarian coordinators at country level.
Budget & Appropriations
InterAction’s federal budget and appropriations advocacy has long been a mainstay of our public policy work, with members relying on InterAction staff for information, guidance and leadership as they try to influence an important but often arcane process. It was a particularly grueling budget year, dealing with the pressure on our accounts by the freshman members of Congress. InterAction undertook a variety of activities on the budget and appropriations front.
During 2011, debate over the U.S. federal budget and level of appropriations reached a new intensity with notable stalemates between Congress and the administration over the FY2011 budget, raising the debt ceiling of the federal government, and the FY2012 budget. InterAction’s Public Policy Committee was the focal point for the community to create a strategy to respond to the proposed dramatic and disproportionate cuts in foreign assistance.
A new component of InterAction’s budget advocacy in 2011 was the publication and distribution of the first ever Choose to Invest in Foreign Assistance booklet, an upgraded version of the budget recommendation document InterAction has created in previous years. Choose to Invest included detailed justifications for InterAction’s recommended federal funding levels by account and sector, time graphs, success stories and quotes from policy makers on both sides of the aisle. The booklet was a key tool for the NGO community to reach out to members of Congress and their staff who may have been previously uninformed about these particular budget issues. Several members and partners, including USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, used InterAction’s blog to post on the subject.
As the first famine in a generation began to unfold in the Horn of Africa, an obvious disconnect emerged between a Congress that is slashing foreign assistance and children starving to death. InterAction assumed leadership of media and communications activities for an NGO coalition working to sustain funding for foreign assistance. We kept members informed with around-the-clock tracking and updates, compiled and distributed core messages to InterAction members to support their advocacy efforts against congressional cuts of foreign assistance accounts.
In the end, the final FY2012 funding for poverty-focused international development and humanitarian assistance accounts was protected from significant cuts.
In addition to advocacy on the federal budget, InterAction assisted congressional staff with the rollout of the draft Global Partnerships Act of 2011, a full rewrite of the 50-year-old Foreign Assistance Act, which this community has advocated for the past three years. Notably, the humanitarian portions of the Global Partnerships Act closely mirror InterAction’s recommendations in its November 2009 paper Reform Priorities in the Humanitarian Sector.
Major public policy papers
InterAction’s papers and publications are enormously valuable as demonstrations of collective advocacy, and they save member organizations from having to prepare separate materials on the same topics. Because InterAction is a trusted messenger, our collaborative material brings great value. In 2011, InterAction released two major papers on U.S. foreign policy and distributed a third publication.
InterAction hand-delivered copies of its second Foreign Assistance Briefing Book (FABB) to lawmakers once the new Congress was in session in early 2011. The book educates Congress on core issues affecting the NGO community and also introduces lawmakers to InterAction and our members. We also delivered it to key staff in the administration, and to strategic partners at think tanks, academic institutions, corporations, foundations and multilateral institutions.
Later in 2011, InterAction convened members from the global environment and development communities for a unique series of discussions aimed at better integrating these fields. Drawing on the expertise of professionals from over 30 organizations, InterAction drafted a policy paper that outlines a new approach, captures successes in the field, and lists recommendations for NGOs, Congress, the administration and donors. The Nature of Development is an innovative analysis of the policy opportunities around development and conservation, outlining a course for lifting 3 billion people from poverty while dealing with increasing natural resource degradation.
In December, after discussions with our members, InterAction released Country Ownership: Moving from Rhetoric to Action. The paper, which outlines core elements of country ownership and offers recommendations for improving U.S. government implementation, will serve as a platform in 2012 for continued engagement with key decision-makers in the administration, Congress and our community of nongovernmental organizations.
Outreach
InterAction worked on several fronts to sharpen our outreach. We redesigned our website, improving the navigation tools and multimedia. The goal is for the new site to be a community hub for our members, clearly demonstrating the impact of their work through pictures, videos, thoughtful papers, member blogs and general information. We launched a new blog, which featured contributions not only by InterAction but also by our members, corporations, the U.S. government and others involved in humanitarian and development work.
We also launched a new website for Monday Developments Magazine (rechristened Monthly Developments Magazine in 2012) to put MD on par with more mainstream magazines that have a web presence, offering online advertising and expanded promotion of a rebranded job board.
We have increased our social media presence, doubling both our Facebook and Twitter communities in 2011. Our strategy has allowed us to become a community hub, to promote our members and ourselves, and to disseminate articles of interest to our community. We participated in several successful social media campaigns in 2011, including the UN’s World Humanitarian Day campaign to recognize humanitarian workers around the globe and USAID’s FWD campaign to bring attention to the crisis in the Horn of Africa. We also live-tweeted several major events, including InterAction’s Forum and the G20 in Cannes.
In our biggest outreach success in 2011, InterAction assumed leadership of media and communications activities for an NGO coalition working to keep foreign assistance accounts from suffering disproportionate cuts compared to other accounts in the U.S. federal budget. We hosted weekly conference calls, drafting and providing talking points and other common messaging materials to the group. The campaign’s social media component, which included organized tweeting using the hashtag #cutscostlives and a blogging campaign, was particularly successful, engaging several InterAction members and partners, as well as concerned citizens. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah used InterAction’s blog to write about the topic.
Mapping
With funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), InterAction developed Food Security Aid Map, which provides detailed project-level information on food security and agriculture work being done by our members. The site can be browsed by location, sector, organization or project. The site is part of NGO Aid Map, a larger initiative that aims to increase transparency, foster partnerships and improve coordination, helping NGOs, donors and the public make more informed decisions about where to direct their resources. NGO Aid Map also includes crisis maps for the Horn of Africa response, created in summer 2011, and Haiti, created in 2010.
Best Practices and Innovations Initiative
InterAction continues our Best Practices and Innovations Initiative (BPI), which launched in September 2009 with an initial focus on agriculture and rural livelihoods. BPI promotes information sharing on effective program approaches and aims to improve practice standards by boosting the efficiency and impact of field programs. A selection committee composed of member and nonmember experts chose the winners. The third and final round of winners was selected in 2011, completing Phase I of the project: ADRA International, Africare, Save the Children, Winrock International and World Vision. Phase II will begin in 2012.
G8/G20
In 2011, InterAction strengthened and increased the impact and effectiveness of global civil society organizations’ advocacy work toward the G8 and G20. Early in the year, InterAction was unanimously elected to co-chair the Global G8/G20 Civil Society Working Group with BOND, the U.K. National Platform and our British counterpart. We also created a media group to coordinate communications outreach, getting the community’s voice more broadly heard.
Over the course of the year, InterAction’s extensive coordination led to the development and dissemination of six policy papers targeted at U.S. government officials. InterAction and BOND also organized three civil society consultations around the world to provide input into Bill Gates’ G20 report on financing for development. InterAction attended the G8 and G20 summits and coordinated global NGO responses in real time to summit outcomes. The Cannes G20 Summit in November was the most successful media effort to date, with media briefings organized for our members both in Cannes and Washington and extensive press coverage both in print and on television.
Busan
Civil society groups, including InterAction and eight of its members, attended the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) in Busan, South Korea, in November 2011 to review progress in making aid more effective. InterAction’s president and CEO, Sam Worthington, was invited to be the sole civil society representative included in the U.S. government delegation. In the months leading up to Busan, U.S. CSOs worked through InterAction to engage with the U.S. government in four roundtables on democratic country ownership; the enabling environment for civil society; transparency, accountability and results; and fragile states.
What made the summit in Busan unique was that it was the first ministerial-level forum in which civil society was a full stakeholder in formulating development policy. It was also the first where civil society had a seat at the negotiating table, which was made possible through the BetterAid Coalition, a global advocacy group of over 1,000 CSOs.
The challenge at Busan was to strengthen the current global system of development cooperation, based on common principles and goals. All countries – including powerful emerging economies like Brazil, India and China – not heretofore engaged in aid effectiveness deliberations agreed to basic principles of development cooperation. In addition to those noted above, these include a focus on results and transparency of budgets or aid flows.
InterAction Business Council
Since many of our members do not accept – nor are they focused on – U.S. government funding, we are developing the InterAction Business Council (IBC) to promote collective action for initiatives in Africa, Asia and Latin America and to advocate for solutions within the health, nutrition, agriculture and food security sectors. The IBC brings together NGO, corporate, and international development and humanitarian leaders to understand and document the basis for effective partnerships that benefit the local community in markets where NGOs and corporate members operate and invest. The IBC is committed to protecting the health and livelihoods of underserved populations by creating or scaling sustainable and responsible programs.
Alliance for International Youth Development
Members and partners have organized to bring greater attention to the “youth bulge” – half the world’s population is currently under age 25, with 85 percent of these youth living in developing countries. The new Alliance for International Youth Development (AIYD) formally launched its strategic partnership with InterAction. InterAction serves as the “home” and fiduciary agent for the alliance, and an alliance coordinator is being recruited.
The alliance aims to promote effective policies and programs and advocate for resources that support youth worldwide. The Alliance includes 24 organizational members, including InterAction member NGOs and private sector agencies. As a “hub” for youth-focused development, the Alliance is leading the development of Guiding Principles for Youth Development with other youth-focused coalitions in support of its mission to highlight and promote “effective practices,” and is engaging key donors including USAID and the World Bank on issues of youth participation in development.
1,000 Days Partnership
In September 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the 1,000 Days Partnership, the U.S. response to the UN’s Scaling Up Nutrition challenge. In 2011, InterAction became the incubator for this innovative advocacy partnership when staff were hired and joined InterAction’s office. 1,000 days moved quickly to refresh its communications and brand, and recruit allies and partners from NGOs to businesses to policy makers.
The 1,000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s 2nd birthday offer a unique window of opportunity to shape healthier and more prosperous futures. The right nutrition during this 1,000 day window can have a profound impact on a child’s ability to grow, learn, and rise out of poverty. It can also shape a society’s long-term health, stability and prosperity.
Today, undernutrition is still a leading cause of death of young children throughout the world. For infants and children under the age of two, the consequences of undernutrition are particularly severe, often irreversible, and reach far into the future. By focusing on improving nutrition for mothers and children in the 1,000 day window, we can help ensure a child can live a healthy and productive life. Investing in better nutrition in the 1,000 day window can also help families, communities and countries break the cycle of poverty.
Looking Forward
We are proud of what we accomplished in 2011, which goes well beyond this report and builds on the work of over 30 working groups and multiple special task forces. Looking forward, we will build on what we have done and will continue to work with members and partners to alleviate extreme poverty and help the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
Some of the challenges ahead of us include:
- Developing a series of guidance notes and webinars on impact evaluation targeted at NGO staff, which will provide an introduction to impact evaluation, its relationship to routine M&E, an overview of mixed methods and the use of impact evaluation results.
- We and our working groups will be writing and distributing the Foreign Assistance Briefing Book (FABB) 2012 and Choose to Invest 2012.
- Our BPI Initiative will enter phase 2, adopting a more focused approach to better identify promising NGO approaches to key challenge areas and persistent constraints to agricultural development.
