Save the Children urges the U.S. government to use a “better mix of aid models” to replace the current one, where program implementation, it says, relies on international contractors and nongovernmental organizations.
“There is no ‘silver bullet’ aid mechanism able to solve all the development challenges in a partner country,” the group says in a four-page briefer of its recommendations to reform U.S. aid. “But providing aid in a manner that encourages greater local ownership of programs and builds capacity of local institutions is clearly fundamental.”
Save the Children’s proposal involves the following steps:
- Adopting a flexible country-by-country development approach.
- Giving more authority and increasing the capacity of U.S. Agency for International Development field missions to choose which aid instruments to use.
- Intensifying efforts to improve the capacity and accountability of aid-recipient governments and local NGO communities.
