PhilanTopic

The Social Progress Index: Measuring What Counts?

The Washington, D.C.-based Social Progress Imperative made a splash at the Skoll World Forum earlier this month when it launched its Social Progress Index (SPI), an ambitious effort to inform and influence development policies around the globe.

Developed by Harvard Business School professor and competitiveness expert Michael E. Porter in collaboration with Scott Stern of MIT, the index is founded on the principle that "what we measure guides the choices we make." To that end, the index analyzes fifty-two outcome-based (as opposed to input-based) indicators in three dimensions of social progress: meeting basic human needs; establishing the foundations of well-being that enable individuals to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives; and creating opportunity for all to reach their full potential. (For a complete breakdown of indicators, click here.)

While the index and the report (154 pages, PDF) released in conjunction with the launch of the index includes only fifty countries, those countries represent three-quarters of the world's population. Here's a chart from the report that plots their aggregate SPI scores against GDP per capita (PPP):

As the chart shows, the countries included in the index and report are fairly well distributed across income levels, ranging from Switzerland at the high end with a GDP per capita of $51,262; to middle-income countries such as the Russian Federation ($21,246), South Africa ($10,960), and China ($8,400); to lower-income countries like Egypt ($6,281), India ($3,627), and Mozambique ($975).

So, what do the SPI team's findings based on an analysis of a full year of data reveal? For starters, that countries' level of overall development -- as measured by GDP per capita and/or indices of global competitiveness -- often mask striking social and environmental challenges and strengths. For example, Costa Rica, a lower-middle-income country with a PPP of $12,157, ranks twelfth overall in the index, ahead of richer countries such as Israel ($27,825) and Argentina ($17,554); nineteenth in terms of basic human needs; and eighth for opportunity -- ahead of France, Japan, and Germany, all of which rank higher in terms of overall score. In contrast, the United Arab Emirates, the third-richest country ($47,893) in the SPI sample, ranks nineteenth overall, including eleventh in terms of basic human needs, but only thirtieth for opportunity and a disappointing thirty-seventh in terms of foundations of well-being.

The index/report also seem to indicate that economic development is necessary but not sufficient for social progress; that it is possible to achieve a high level of social progress at a relatively modest income level; and that while low-income countries are clustered at the bottom of the index, there is a wide range of social progress within this group. For instance, Mozambique, the poorest country in the SPI sample, is ranked fourteenth in terms of equality and inclusion, whereas Rwanda, the third-poorest country in the sample, is ranked forty-fourth for equality and inclusion. At the same time, Rwanda tops the index in terms of ecosystem sustainability, while the United States, which has the second-highest PPP in the sample and is ranked sixth overall, ranks near the very bottom (forty-eighth) in terms of ecosystem sustainability.

If by highlighting each country's strengths and weaknesses with respect to various aspects of social progress these data get you thinking differently about development, then SPI is off to a good start. "The purpose of the Social Progress Index," the report's authors note, "is to benchmark performance and motivate improvement while providing useful insights that will help all stakeholders to make better choices, prioritize investments, and strengthen implementation capacity to improve the lives of citizens."

Looking ahead, SPI plans to refine its model based on feedback and empirical testing, eventually expanding the number of countries in the index from fifty to a hundred and twenty. It also plans to form a Social Progress Network comprising partners from research and academic institutions, think tanks, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and international development organizations "to identify the policies, institutions, legal frameworks, and financing mechanisms that can drive more effective and efficient social progress, through international benchmarking and fostering specific research projects." And it will explore the possibility of creating a Social Progress Capacity Index to measure the potential of a country's government, business, and civil society institutions to contribute to innovation in the social sector.

In the meantime, governments are paying attention, with Paraguay already having agreed to incorporate the SPI model into its national development framework. Which perhaps begs the question: How will the philanthropic sector, in the U.S. and elsewhere, respond? The index has already begun to spark discussions about impact investing and social entrepreneurship. Will foundations become more active in those conversations than they have been to date? And how, if at all, might the index change the way we approach economic development -- both overseas and here in the United States? Have thoughts you'd like to share? Use the comments section below.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Dispatch From Philanthropy’s Frontlines: Globalization in Chicago

(Michael Seltzer is a trustee of EMpower-the Emerging Markets Foundation and a distinguished lecturer at the Baruch College School of Public Affairs of the City University of New York. To read his earlier dispatch from the Council on Foundations' annual conference, click here.)

Global issues were front and center at the annual meeting of the Council on Foundations in Chicago earlier this month. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. While many U.S. nonprofits have long been active in the international arena, the transnational dimensions of a range of issues, from food security, to sex trafficking and violence against women, to global warming, have become ever more apparent and have helped fuel the growth of nongovernmental organizations globally.

At the same time, more and more U. S. corporations, especially in information technology, financial services, natural resources extraction, and pharmaceuticals, derive a larger percentage of their profits from overseas operations, while a handful of the nation's largest foundations continue to fund international efforts. In addition, newer players like Bloomberg Philanthropies regularly make connections between their work at home and global efforts.

On Sunday, the first day of the conference, Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, senior advisor to the U.S. secretary of state for civil society and emerging democracies, remarked on the growing importance of the nonprofit sector globally and State Department efforts to position the U.S. government as a leading supporter of the global philanthropic and NGO movements, elevate the role of civil society in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy, engage multilateral organizations working to advance democracy and civil society around the globe, and promote the independence of civil society globally.

Other positive trends in this arena include the lowering of barriers that historically have discouraged U.S. foundations from funding efforts in other countries. John Harvey, managing director of the council's Global Philanthropy program, reported on recent efforts to modify and improve U.S. Treasury and IRS rules governing international grantmaking, including the launch of equivalency determination service NGOsource. Charities Aid Foundation America has announced that it is now providing 501(c)(3) equivalency services (something it has been doing for many years) at no cost to American donors. And public foundations like the International Youth Foundation and Tides Foundation have ramped up their international efforts. Tides now supports projects in more than seventy countries, while IYF is working with partners in more than eighty-six countries. More recently established organizations such as the African Women's Leadership Foundation-USA have joined the ranks of older organizations like the American India Foundation and Brazil Foundation in working to forge connections between diaspora communities in the U.S. and civil society efforts back home, while the International Center on Not-For-Profit Law (ICNL) today serves government officials and the donor community in more than a hundred countries.

Another indicator of the growth of global philanthropy is the emergence of national philanthropic associations around the globe. Centro Mexicano para la Filantropía (CEMEFI) boasts more than twelve hundred members and is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. Indeed, the philanthropic sector accounts for 1 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product, while more than eight hundred Mexican companies have signed corporate social responsibility pledges.

The conference closed on Tuesday with a plenary appearance by two of America's most important social sector thought leaders: feminist playwright Eve Ensler, whose latest project, V-Day, seeks to create a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and who spoke about the organization's work in the war-torn Congo; and Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health, the award-winning global health organization, who spoke about PIH's work in impoverished Haiti, where PIH has long had a presence.

As technology and capital flows continue to shrink the globe and the need to address climate change, nuclear proliferation, and other borderless problems grows more urgent, we should expect that more and more people in more and more places will look to philanthropy for funding and answers. The sense that this is already happening was palpable in the halls and conference rooms of the Chicago Hilton, and I, for one, am confident that it is one of the trends we'll be hearing a lot about it in the years to come.

In the meantime, click here to catch up on highlights from the 2013 CoF meeting. And if you'd like to share your thoughts about what philanthropy can and should be doing to promote the "greater good" globally, we'd love to hear them. Use the comments section below...

-- Michael Seltzer

Philanthropy and Global Development: When Worlds Collide

(Jeff Falkenstein is vice president of data architecture at the Foundation Center. In October, he wrote about the challenges of gathering foundation grants data in a timely fashion.)

Earlier this month I had the good fortune to join policy makers, academics, and leaders from civil society and the private sector in Paris at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD) annual Global Forum on Development. (For those who haven't heard of it, the OECD works with governments, multilateral agencies, and bilateral agencies to better understand global trade and investment flows; the drivers of economic, social, and environmental change; and what can be done to address urgent global development problems. It then builds on that work to predict future trends in global trade and development.)

In the past, forum attendees typically discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by efforts to alleviate poverty around the globe. This year, however, the focus was on the progress made over the past decade in meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- and on jumpstarting a dialogue about new challenges in a post-2015 world.

It was clear from reports presented at the meeting that, two years from their original 2015 target date, the MDGs are already a success. Poverty rates have declined globally. Access to health care has improved. The number of deaths of children under the age of 5 has fallen, to 7 million in 2011, down from 12 million in 1990. The number of AIDS-related deaths also has fallen, to 1.7 million in 2011, down from 2.3 million in 2005. Thanks to the MDGs, well-designed and coordinated social programs are producing a wide range of positive outcomes, including improved nutrition and food security and higher rates of school enrollment.

Despite this progress, forum attendees made it clear that challenges remain. The income gap between the poorest and wealthiest individuals continues to widen, while acute poverty afflicts tens of millions of people around the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, half the population still lives on less than $1.25 a day. Access to basic services remains a global challenge; close to 2.4 billion people around the world go without proper sanitation facilities, while 1.1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water. Meanwhile, the economic growth of the last twenty years has not translated into job creation. The number of informal, poor-quality jobs remains high in many developing countries, with young people particularly affected. In Africa and the Middle East, young people comprise 60 percent of the unemployed.

Somewhat lost among the good news is the fact that development aid globally fell some 4 percent in 2012, following a 2 percent decline in 2011. There has also been a noticeable shift in aid allocations from the LDCs (i.e., the poorest countries) toward middle-income countries. For example, bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa totaled $26.2 billion in 2012, a year-over-year decline of nearly 8 percent.

As already thread-bare social safety nets become more frayed, the global development sector is looking to the private sector to pick up the slack, leading many to question whether that's an appropriate role for foundations -- and whether, collectively, they have the resources to do so. After all, the majority of foundations in the U.S. are independent or family foundations that focus their grantmaking in two or three areas of interest and/or in a specific geographic region. Similarly, corporate foundations tend to fund efforts in communities where they have employees and facilities, while community foundations, by definition, target local geographic areas. Outside the U.S., foundations tend to use their resources to operate their own programs and often look more like grantseeking public charities than private foundations.

The U.S. foundation at the epicenter of global development work is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the scope and scale of its work has tended to reinforce the notion that foundations are the answer to shortfalls in global development assistance. In the global health field, for example, the Gates Foundation is the third largest donor after the government of the United States and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The level at which Gates supports global health work is an exception, however, not the rule. And while Heather Grady, vice president for foundation initiatives at the Rockefeller Foundation, noted in her plenary remarks that Rockefeller itself has been an important driver and supporter of multi-stakeholder engagement with global development issues over its hundred-year history -- and while many other foundations are active in the global arena -- Gates is by far the biggest player.

So the question remains: If the global development community is eager to increase its engagement with private foundations, how do we bring more foundations to the global development table? And for those foundations already at the table, how can they better coordinate with other actors in the global development space?

I'm happy to report that a number of initiatives to do just that are under way. In an effort to increase communication among various stakeholders in global development work, the OECD and United Nations Development Programme created the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-Operation to support and monitor development cooperation and "ensure it achieves the maximum impact in eradicating poverty and building better lives." To date, the partnership has brought 160 countries and 45 organizations together around a set of principles that it hopes will form the basis for effective development cooperation going forward.

In addition, UNDP, the UN's Economic and Social Council, the Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support (WINGS), and OECD's netFWD initiative are actively engaged in helping the global philanthropic community understand how it can support development efforts and, with an eye to the future, are working to scale collaboration among philanthropic organizations, governments, and multilateral agencies. To that end, feedback from an ongoing e-discussion will feed into a special policy dialogue on "The role of philanthropic organizations in the post-2015 setting" on April 23 at the United Nations in New York.

The Foundation Center, too, is doing its part to increase the engagement of foundations with the global development sector. Through our partnerships with OECD, Development Gateway, and the World Bank, as well as through the development of Web portals like WASHfunders, the center is helping to shed light on the intersection of global development and philanthropy and creating greater understanding of those fields among governments and foundations.

I'll be attending the event at the UN on the 23rd and will be interested to see which foundations are represented there. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts about whether private foundations should think of themselves as part of the global development community? And if not, why not?

-- Jeff Falkenstein

Bill Gates' 2013 Annual Letter

Bill Gates released his annual letter -- the fifth since his first in 2009 -- earlier this week, and like the others, it's worth reading.

From its theme, "The Power of Measurement," to its assertion that "You can achieve amazing progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal," the letter is a testimonial to and endorsement of the approach known as strategic philanthropy. It's also a story about progress and the power of technology to change people's lives for the better. And it's a nice example of how Web and social media technologies can be used to transform an essentially static document into an engaging online experience.

But don't take our word for it; listen and watch what Bill himself has to say.

And after you've had a chance to read the letter, be sure to hop over to Tom Paulson's Humanosphere blog to watch data visualization whiz Hans Rosling illustrate, in beautiful and dramatic terms, the point of Gates' letter.

-- Mitch Nauffts

 

[Infographic] What the AIDS Epidemic Still Reveals About Us

This week's infographic, courtesy of Colorlines.com, shows that the contours of the AIDS epidemic remain unchanged. As Kai Wright notes on the Colorlines site, "Globally, those who have access to social and economic capital avoid the virus or, when infected, live healthy lives with it." In the U.S., meanwhile, the epidemic increasingly affects black gay and bisexual men and black women.

On World AIDS Day 2012, we stand with all those who are working to increase awareness, fight prejudice, and improve education about HIV/AIDS prevention, here in the U.S. and around the globe.

 

Jeff Raikes on the 'Innovation Pile Up'

(Jeff Raikes is chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The following post originally appeared on the foundation's Impatient Optimists blog and is reposted here with the permission of the foundation.)

Welcome to my new blog series, where I'll be sharing my thoughts on the Gates Foundation and philanthropy. Every six weeks I'll be posting a new blog discussing a pressing issue at the foundation or addressing some of the challenges and opportunities facing the philanthropic community. More than anything else, this is a space for a conversation. So please submit your questions, share your feedback, and let me know if there are any topics you would like to hear about.

For my first post, I want to discuss a challenge at the foundation that's been on my mind lately. It's called the "innovation pile up." Let me explain.

At the Gates Foundation, we believe in the power of innovation to improve lives. That's why over the last decade we've invested in one of the fattest pipelines of lifesaving technologies the health and development world has ever seen. A new, rapid diagnostic test for tuberculosis that will help reduce transmission of the disease. Better tools to enable women to plan their families. Even improved toilets that provide clean sanitation for the world's poorest people. In all, the foundation and its partners have developed more than a hundred new innovations that are available today or scheduled to be introduced by the end of the decade.

That's the good news.

Here's the bad news: None of these innovations will make a difference if they can't reach the people we aim to serve.

Many obstacles stand in their way. Some public health systems in the developing world lack staff, training, or infrastructure to take advantage of these new tools and technologies. Regulatory agencies can be slow to approve new drugs and devices. Market forces may make it difficult to introduce these new products. Then there are actual roadblocks. Transportation systems and roadways may be so bad -- or nonexistent -- that just getting these new tools safely to the people who need them is a challenge. Finally, even if new drugs and tools arrive in remote villages, cultural practices may dissuade people from adopting them.

That's why we need to get smarter at delivering these innovations. If we don't, we risk not improving and saving as many lives as we could.

At the foundation, this challenge has been dubbed the "innovation pile-up," and solving it is one of my top priorities. As part of the re-organization of our global programs, which I outlined in my 2011 annual report letter, we are now balancing our research and development efforts with a greater focus on how these innovations will get delivered. Chris Elias, our new president of global development, brings decades of on-the-ground experience in heath and development. He is leading our work to better understand the obstacles to introducing and scaling access to new tools and technologies and how we can overcome them.

We've already learned a lot about effective delivery from our work on vaccines. We have a better understanding of the best funding mechanisms for new vaccines and the most reliable ways to deliver them safely to the remotest health clinics. Thanks to these efforts we are on track to significantly scale up the delivery of lifesaving vaccines in developing countries and prevent the deaths of millions of children under the age of five by the end of the decade.

Now we need to build on this success and ensure other promising technologies reach the people who need them the most. We are exploring ways to integrate some of these new innovations into existing delivery systems. For example, a new, easy-to-use injectable contraceptive that would provide women living in remote areas a simple, effective family planning tool will likely be introduced through family planning programs already operating in these countries.

Other existing innovations will require new delivery systems and business models to be successful. Consider the challenge of expanding access to a simple, lifesaving product like the mosquito coil. The spiral-shaped insect-repelling incense has the potential to protect families from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But the cost -- even at pennies per day -- remains out of financial reach for many of the world's poorest families. Donors may be able to help drive down the costs for these families, but there hasn’t been much interest in this solution without more data on the impact of wide-scale coil use. That's why we’re working to fill this knowledge gap by funding new research studies. We're also exploring next-generation mosquito repellents that would last for months, cost less, and not require burning. All of these solutions will require the cooperation and partnership of governments, the private sector, and consumers to be successful.

These are tough challenges. But I'm confident we can overcome them. We now have a team dedicated to speeding up the delivery of existing innovations and finding new system delivery models for entirely new innovations. More importantly, we will be listening closely to the people who will benefit from these innovations. By understanding their needs, we can design the best solutions and most effective ways of delivering them. Working together, we will realize the full potential of these innovations, and, in doing so, help the people we serve realize the full potential of their own lives.

-- Jeff Raikes

Clinton Global Initiative 2012 - Monday a.m.

PhilanTopic is at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan this morning to cover the eighth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. (Watch the livestream here.) The theme of this year's meeting is "Designing for Impact" -- how can we design our world to create more opportunity and more equality? And how might we design our lives, our environments, and global systems in order to impact the many enormous challenges at hand.

The meeting opened yesterday with a session moderated by CGI founding chair and former President Bill Clinton that featured Michael Duke, president/CEO of Wal-Mart Stores; Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan; Ban Ki-Moon, secretary-general of the United Nations; and Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group. (Watch the video here.)

Things really got rolling this morning, however, with a powerful speech ("Designing Diplomacy for the 21st Century") by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- who was welcomed by CGI attendees as if she were a rockstar (or once-and-future presidential candidate). In it, Secretary Clinton shared a three-part framework for U.S. diplomacy and development assistance in "a time of great change." My scribbled notes don't do it justice (you can watch the livestream here), but here's the gist of what she said:

-- In a time of enormous technological, demographic, political, and geopolitical change, the goal of U.S. development assistance is "to help solve problems and support opportunities around the world."

-- In the 1960s, official development aid from donor countries to developing countries represented 70% of capital flows into those countries; today, it's 13% -- relatively insignificant compared to trade, business investment, and remitttances.

-- The U.S. aid budget has increased in real-dollar terms over that period -- but represents a much smaller share of aid to developing countries overall.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. State Department has three objectives going forward with respect to development assistance. As Clinton put it:

1) We want to move from direct aid to investment. The political and geopolitical landscape has changed, needs have changed, assistance needs to be rethought. We need to be intentional and strategic. We need to focus on and promote public-private partnerships ("You cannot do development in today's world without partnering with the private sector"). We need to recognize that many of yesterday's laggards are today's rising stars (in the last decade, six of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world have been in Africa). We need to be rigorous and demonstrate results.

2) We need to encourage "country ownership." That means building capacity within developing countries so they are able to set their own priorities, develop plans to achieve those priorities, execute on those plans, and, increasingly, fund those plans. And it means ownership by "the whole country" -- men and women. The surest path out of poverty for developing countries is educating and empowering women and girls.

3) We need to put ourselves out of business. The State Department looks forward to the day when public-sector assistance is replaced by private-sector investment. ("I'm always surprised when people are surprised to hear that.") Before we get there, however, State (and others) need to expand the number of partners with which it works; the days of government working through large international NGOs only are over. Elites around the world also have to recognize that they need to pay their fair share of taxes and support critical investments in public education and infrastructure. And donor governments around the world need to step up their efforts to combat corruption, which as much as anything is responsible for stifling innovation and smothering human aspiration in too many countries.

In closing, Clinton reminded those in attendance that "freedom and dinity are more important than food and water." And she urged everyone in the room "to stand together to resist the forces of extremism and violence and stand firm for peaceful transitions to democracy in North Africa and the Middle East." (Watch her complete remarks here.)

Back with more in a bit...

-- Mitch Nauffts

[Infographic] The Water-Rich vs. the Water-Poor

Our infographic of the week illustrates the disparity in water consumption between "water-rich" countries with plentiful access to clean water and "water-poor" countries with little or limited access to clean water. It was created by Seametrics, a manufacturer of water flow meter technology. (H/t WASHfunders.org)

 

Source: Seametrics

International AIDS Conference: Next Stop Africa?

(Sarah Johnstone is a program assistant for Africa and the Middle East at the STARS Foundation in London. This is her first post for PhilanTopic.)

As in years past, this week's biennial International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., has brought together representatives of communities affected by the disease and key experts in the field in order to "translate recent momentous scientific advances into action that will address means to end the epidemic."

The conference’s underlying theme, embodied in its tagline "Turning the Tides Together," is inclusivity, as reflected by the wide variety of people -- from national leaders, to representatives of community-based organizations, to people affected by the disease -- who have come to the conference to discuss issues surrounding HIV/AIDS. As in years past, the hope is that the conference will serve to catalyze progress in combating the epidemic on the international, regional, country, and local levels.

Indeed, the idea of encouraging "local responses" and "working with communities" to combat the spread of the virus has been garnering a lot of attention and is one of the important themes on a long list of conference objectives.

For those of us at the London-based STARS Foundation, it is exactly this type of approach that we believe to be the most promising in terms of turning the tide in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Through a program of unrestricted funding combined with capacity-building assistance, STARS seeks to empower grassroots and community-based organizations to use their understanding of local situations to create specially-designed programs for their target communities.

One such organization is S.A.F.E., in Kenya, which uses the performing arts to educate, inspire, and deliver social change. S.A.F.E. delivers three programs in three different communities, each of which tackles an issue specific to that community and situation, including HIV/AIDS in and around Mombasa. Although founded by British-born Nick Redding, the organization's programs are locally based and driven. All program staff hail from the community in which they work, conduct any research that is needed in the community, and design and deliver the performances themselves. Because the performances frequently address deeply rooted taboos or issues associated with severe social stigma, the local and contextual understanding of program staff is critical to the organization's success. With that in mind, the shows not only are performed in the local language, they also portray situations that reflect the experiences of the local community as documented in the pre-performance research.

S.A.F.E.'s impressive success is clear proof of the importance of local responses to issues such as HIV/AIDS. But the organizers of the International AIDS Conference have yet to see the benefits of using their event to harness that approach in any of the world's HIV/AIDS hotspots. Consider: According to UNAIDS, there were 33.4 million people living with HIV globally in 2008, of whom 22.4 million lived in sub-Saharan Africa. Contrast that with the 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. in 2009. And yet, a review of the previous eighteen conference locations quickly reveals that the conference has been held in just three developing countries -- only one of which was in Africa.

One could be forgiven, of course, for thinking it an excellent idea to hold the conference in the world's richest and most powerful country. There are at least a dozen U.S. cities with the capacity to host such an event, and the U.S. medical research establishment has led the way in unraveling the mysteries of the virus. By the same token, holding the conference in an expensive city in one of the world's most developed countries makes it virtually inaccessible to the poorest members of the global community. Surely, there are very few leaders of community-based organizations in rural sub-Saharan Africa who can afford a week-long trip to Washington, D.C. Yet, these are precisely the leaders -- and communities -- with the most to gain from the conference.

If one of the objectives of this year's conference is to leverage the attention it generates to help end, once and for all, the epidemic in the United States -- a country with more than adequate means to tackle the disease inside its borders without help from others -- surely it makes sense to hold future conferences in countries where the need is greatest and resources are scarce. South Africa successfully hosted the World Cup, the most popular sporting event in the world, in 2010. It's time for the organizers of the International Aids Conference to build on that legacy.

-- Sarah Johnstone