Devpolicy News: Aid conference to return | New Riddell paper | ODE event - Devpolicy Blog from the Development Policy Centre

Australasian Aid Conference to return in 2015

After the very positive response to this year’s Australasian Aid and International Development Policy Workshop in February, we are pleased to announce that the conference will be back on 12-13 February 2015, once again in partnership with the Asia Foundation, but with a slightly shorter name. So save the dates and start getting your abstracts ready. Thanks again to everyone who attended and provided feedback to us through the post-event survey.

Roger Riddell discussion paper

Roger Riddell’s hugely popular keynote and speech at the February aid conference, ‘Does Foreign Aid Really Work?‘, has been one of our most read items on the blog in the last month. We have just released his accompanying discussion paper. Read it here.

Australian aid stories

We’ve already started receiving submissions for Australian Aid Stories, but we are still looking for your ripping aid yarns. What has and hasn’t worked in Australian aid should influence thinking about what should be done now and in the future, but too often the innovations and achievements of Australian aid, as well as the failures, vanish without a trace. This is our attempt to collect those stories.

If you have a story to share, either leave a comment on the blog or send us an email at devpolicy@anu.edu.au.

People news

We’d like to warmly welcome our latest intern from the Australian National Internships Program, Alexandra Humphrey Cifuentes. Alex is studying economics and finance at ANU. She will be undertaking research on public support for aid in Australia during her time with us.

International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day was celebrated on 8 March. On the blog we featured two fascinating interviews with female leaders from the Pacific: Serena Sumanop, Executive Director of The Voice Inc in PNG; and Astrid Boulekone, General Manager of the Vanuatu Chamber of Commerce and Industry. We’ve spoken with a number of other women from the region in the Pacific Conversations series and we’ve also written on a number of gender-related topics in recent months, such as child marriage, gender-based violence in PNG and in the region more broadly.

We’re not only talking about gender, we’re also (quite literally) taking steps.

A team from Devpolicy is participating in CARE Australia’s Walk in Her Shoes challenge this week to support women and girls living in poverty. You can contribute to our fundraising efforts here.

And we are also continuing our work to establish the PNG Family and Sexual Violence Case Management Centre. We’d like to sincerely thank those who have supported this work so far through their donation to Devpolicy.

Catch up on our podcasts

If you missed our fascinating event on risk in the Pacific earlier this month, you can now download the whole discussion as an audio podcast via Feedburner or iTunes. We’ve also uploaded other podcasts in recent weeks, such as the development policy panel on infrastructure at the Asia Pacific Policy Society conference at the Crawford School and our recent Pacific Conversations interviews.

Upcoming events

ODE evaluations: volunteers and aid quality
10am – 1pm 21 March 2014

2014 PNG and Pacific Update

The PNG Update will be at the University of PNG in Port Moresby on 12-13 June and the Pacific Update will here at the ANU on 16-17 June. We have a call for papers out for the PNG Update. Registrations for the Pacific Update are now open. More details on both here.

2014 PNG Budget Forum

The next PNG Budget Forum will be on Thursday 10 April at the National Research Institute in Port Moresby. The Forum will analyse the 2014 budget, and release the next round of analysis from the PEPE survey. More details coming soon.

2014 Aid Budget Forum

The Federal Budget will be handed down on 13 May, and we will once again be holding an event the very next morning to break down what it means for aid. Save the date! We’ll release more details soon.

Blog highlights

How much are households donating to good causes? Devpolicy examines ABS data.

Andy Brock asks whether delivery units can improve education systems.

Sean Burges argues that Brazilian aid is here to stay.

Waden Narsey says Australian and NZ sanctions on Fiji were ineffective.

Blog summary

You can find a list of all posts since our last newsletter on 3 March in the list below.

Australian aid

Changes in donations to NGOs over time: an analysis of ABS data by Sophie Roden, Michael Wulfsohn and Stephen Howes

The double malnutrition burden: time for Australia to lead by Lawrence Haddad

Pacific & PNG

PNG’s awakening: an interview with Serena Sumanop by Serena Sumanop and Ashlee Betteridge