Street children in Philippines and World.

From Brian Mier, who was project manager on Care Brazil’s finalist project to train prisoners as health agents in the fight against HIV/AIDS:

I would like to thank you guys for putting on another logistically flawless Development Marketplace. This was my second time coming here and although I was disappointed to not win once again, I was really impressed with the projects that did win, especially the amazing inventions that will save peoples lives. I will now be taking over the position of Just and Democratic Governance Coordinator for Action Aid in Brazil. Unfortunately, they are an organization that does not work with the World Bank. But I am going to help my partner David Oliveira de Souza make a run for the next competition and hope to see you all again soon. I think that the quality of the jury was much higher this year than  in 2003, when one of my two jurists thought that they spoke Spanish in Brazil and acted angry when I corrected him. This year the jury process seemed much more professional — except for the fact that they didn’t choose our project of course. Wah wah wah. :-(… But seriously, congratulations. It was a pleasure participating in the event. If any of you ever travel down to Rio de Janeiro, please look me up if you would like to go out for a coffee or beer or something….

With warmest regards,

Brian Mier
CARE Brasil

Tom Grubisich

Juror Ruth Levine, director of programs and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a former World Bank staffer with deep experience in health planning and financing, offers these thoughts on how to improve Development Marketplace. Her thoughts tie in with what Bart Weetjens said in an earlier blog. Here are Ruth’s suggestions:

Since Tuesday, when I watched some of the most worthy health and development projects I’ve seen for a good long fade away into the Development Marketplace "out" pile, I have been worried that we missed some big opportunities and perhaps let the sizzle of the DM overwhelm the steak. What I mean is that there are large expenses involved with the DM infrastructure: the call for projects, the meetings and reviews, the travel of finalists, the display area…and all the rest. And with that, the DM is able to do something really incredible: get a very large number of high-quality, innovative project ideas, along with their passionate proponents, in Washington for a week or so. That’s the sizzle. But when the jurors chose projects, the total amount to allocate covered a small fraction of the total, leaving many highly rated projects on the cutting room floor. The steak, in the end, was more like a hamburger.

I am not necessarily advocating a much larger event, but rather an event where the trappings — important as they are — are scaled in better proportion to the substance. In the end, I think we’d all be much happier if the vast majority of the money ended up going to support these projects.

And there is yet another alternative to consider, to make the most of the enterprise. How about a deal with GlobalGiving.org, which Dennis Whittle and Mari Kuraishi set up after they worked on an original version of Development Marketplace, as a sort of eBay to connect social entrepreneurs to individual investors? DM gets first cut at the projects; those that are highly rated but cannot be accommodated in the DM budget get referred to GlobalGiving.org.

Tom Grubisich