Would you like to influence profound changes in the philosophy guiding  and the delivery of development assistance?

Share your proposals with the powerful partnership of The Global Development Network (GDN) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Sauvé Fellow  Jola Ajibade Kusimo (Scholars Program 2008-09) shares the announcement of the GDN Next Horizons Essay Contest 2014: The future of development assistance

The world has changed radically since the emergence of official development assistance and since the aid agency was invented. Aid is by no means the only source of financing for development in today’s world. Yet for the poorest countries, aid is a vital source of government finance.
How would you reinvent foreign aid for today’s world? How would you reach the poorest people more effectively, no matter where they live? How would you use aid alongside other resources both public and private and how would you organize the system as a whole?

The Global Development Network (GDN), in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is looking for your ideas and solutions in the form of an essay of not more than 5,000 words. We invite fresh thinking related to the future of aid that can inform the ongoing discourse on development assistance and to make this thinking available to policymakers and key stakeholders. Submissions can be sent in English, French or Spanish.

All essays must be submitted on or before Sept. 15, 2014.
Up to 20 winning entries will receive US$20,000 each.

An independent panel will make the final selections of the best and most potentially consequential submissions, based on criteria defined. Select winning ideas may be promoted by GDN and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To apply, go to www.gdn.int/nexthorizons

Whether or not you decide to submit an essay, the Themes and Topics listed will serve as an excellent guide to on-going conversations and investigation of the future of foreign aid.