(UPDATED: I added video.)

Yesterday afternoon, I attended the National Democratic Institute’s global poverty panel at the DNCC. It was moderated by Gayle Smith, who’s a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

The speakers were:

Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State and NDI chairman
Ben Affleck, actor, director, and advocate
Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development
John J. Danilovich, CEO of the Millennium Challenge Account
Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader and Co-Chair of ONE Vote ‘08
Hernando de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy
Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, vice president of the Africa Region of the World Bank
Donald Payne, U.S. representative
Tim Wirth, former U.S. senator, and CEO of the United Nations Foundation
James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank.

Josh Lozman of our policy staff is going to be sending in a post about the panel a little later.

I also took a small camera with me and shot some simple video, so I’ll post a couple clips here to give you a sense of what it was like to be in the room. The 1st is of Senator Tom Daschle answering a question about his recent trip with ONE through Rwanda.

This second one is of Ben Affleck talking about his new perspective after having visited Africa- and what he thinks that new perspective means for how we should message effectively. After, President of the Center for Global Development Nancy Birdsall talks about the incredible progress we’ve seen.

I often struggle to explain my work on “modernizing U.S. foreign assistance policy” to my family in California. But this week, I had something new to share with them to help convey the crux of the issue in one minute: a new video we helped produce at the Center for Global Development (CGD) called “Bring U.S. Foreign Assistance into the 21st Century.”

My family has been joined by another 8200+ individuals who have watched the video on YouTube since it was posted earlier this week and they’ve started to send us their comments. I’m delighted to report that the overwhelming response from viewers is: this video is “fun”, “short” and “makes the point” but that they want to know more.

Many of the policymakers I talk to in Washington tell me they care about foreign aid and global development but that the “American people” don’t want to hear about it and aren’’t interested in the policy details. So the enthusiastic call from people wanting to learn more is music to my ears. I recommend the following:

• Modernizing Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century: An Agenda for the Next U.S. President and CGD’s Modernizing U.S. Foreign Assistance Initiative, which includes: foreign aid 101, election ’08 issues, foreign aid budget analysis, details on Congress, and polling data.
• Rich World, Poor World: A Guide to Global Development on why global development matters for the U.S. and a range of topics including foreign aid, trade and labor standards, state building, HIV/AIDS, and education.
• Impact ‘08: Building a Better, Safer World. The Center for U.S. Global Engagement’s policy framework calling on the 2008 presidential candidates to elevate and strengthen support for development assistance and diplomacy.
• The bipartisan HELP Commission Report produced for Congress.
• ONE Campaign’s “More and Better Aid” resources and their ONE Vote ‘08 site

And keep your eyes open for the launch next Tuesday of “New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century,” a report endorsed by several of the country’s top foreign assistance and global development experts.

My hope is that the video can help you start a conversation with your own friends and family and demonstrate to your representatives in Congress and the White House that there is support for modernizing U.S. foreign assistance and a growing American constituency interested in improving our global development policies to help build a better, safer world.

-Sarah Jane Staats, Senior Associate for Outreach and Policy, Center for Global Development

At the end of last week, I posted excepts from a BBC News article about the high percentage of African doctors moving to more-developed countries. The piece cited a new study by Michael Clemons of the Center for Global Development (CGD).

A couple days ago, Dr. Clemons wrote a comment on the post, saying that he thinks the mainstream media misinterpreted the results of his study.

Dr. Clemons’ comment on my post :

“I wrote the study in question and I think the BBC piece just got it wrong. I explain why here:
http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2008/01/media_reports_on_african_brain_1.php

Also- a useful summary of his research from the CGD site:

“Conventional wisdom says that, because low-income countries need skilled professionals to develop, their migration to better-paying countries is unequivocally bad… So the recent surge in the international mass migration of highly skilled workers has many worrying: will the loss of skilled professionals stymie development?

In this new working paper, CGD research fellow Michael Clemens uses new data on African health worker migration to test whether decreases in emigration raise the number of domestic health professionals, increase the mass availability of basic primary care, or improve a range of public health outcomes.

The results suggest that Africa’s generally low staffing levels and poor public health conditions are the result of factors entirely unrelated to international movements of health professionals, and that the option to emigrate has positively affected Africans’ decisions to enter the health field.

Bottom line: impeding the migration of skilled health professionals, by sending and receiving countries, does little to improve health systems or heath outcomes in Africa.”

I whole heartily thank Dr. Clemons for leaving his comment on the 14th, and hope he may accept my invitation to post on the ONE Blog in the future? We’d love to have your insights.

-Virginia Simmons