Office of Private and Voluntary Cooperation
The Development Challenge: USAID and its U.S. private voluntary organization (PVO) and cooperative partners have long provided a wide array of effective humanitarian and development services in a number of sectors through local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including local cooperatives, in developing countries worldwide. However, without adequate and systematic attention to the organizational health of these NGOs, the humanitarian and development services they deliver with donor support may not be sustainable when donor assistance ends. While there is a long USAID history of working with and through NGOs worldwide and while there has been and continues to be a significant effort to strengthen NGO capacities to deliver services in a number of USAID programs, there now needs to be a more consistent effort to identify and articulate how NGO strengthening can be addressed efficiently and effectively while maintaining and even enhancing service delivery standards. There also is a need to identify the role that NGOs play in conflict situations and how they might be better able to play a more constructive role in conflict prevention and mitigation. The Office of Private and Voluntary Cooperation (PVC) systematically tests, demonstrates and documents the essential components of organizational development in different country contexts (e.g., stable and development-oriented, conflict-prone with humanitarian concerns), the priority order and methods in which organizational components need to be addressed, and with what level of resources. As information is developed on what works best in what circumstances, PVC disseminates this information throughout USAID and the PVO and cooperatives community, to ensure that best practices are replicated for improved NGO sustainability and service delivery worldwide.
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Please note: All documents are in pdf format |
The USAID Program: The PVC program focuses on enhancing the organizational capacities of NGOs and cooperatives to deliver services overseas. This program is implemented through a wide variety of PVOs and cooperatives working across all technical sectors and in all geographic areas of the world. By providing grants to a number of PVOs to test and verify different NGO strengthening mechanisms, the PVC Office seeks to identify lessons that can be further tested, refined, synthesized and disseminated.
The PVC Office also implements two programs that facilitate the shipment of humanitarian and development supplies and equipment overseas, is responsible for the registration of PVOs for the Agency, and serves as the secretariat for the U.S. Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, a group that advises the USAID Administrator on issues and challenges affecting the relationship between U.S. foreign assistance efforts and the work of the private voluntary community.
Other Program Elements: Many USAID missions implement technical service delivery programs through local NGOs. A number of Washington-based programs, including many humanitarian assistance efforts, also rely heavily on local NGOs for service delivery. However, implementing technical programs through NGOs does not necessarily address essential organizational needs (e.g., financial, human resource, leadership) of these NGOs. As a result, programs which implement service delivery through NGOs can benefit from improved sharing of, and access to, information on approaches to organizational development, for example, on what has worked best in one set of circumstances over another. The PVC Office will work to improve this information base and develop a dissemination system that will be as useful as possible to a variety of audiences.
Other Donors: The United States is a leader among donors in supporting PVOs, cooperatives and NGOs, but other donors, including multilateral development banks, multilateral agencies (e.g., the United Nations Development Program), and bilateral donors, also support and rely on voluntary organizations for local implementation of their programs. The PVC Office coordinates and shares information with other donors on lessons learned as a result of monitoring, evaluation and research from PVC-funded activities.
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