Last month, Mark Green, the former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, took to the stage at a Devex Impact House event on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly and argued that development organizations had not done enough to make the case for aid.
“We screwed up,” Green told an audience of development professionals. “We were wrong. We were badly wrong, and we failed to engage and make the case over and over again, and now we have to make a new case and make it over and over again.”
Nor was he a lone voice. Other speakers at Devex Impact House advanced similar positions.