CID Occasional Speaker Series on Research Topics in Sustainable Development :: 'Raise It, Spend It, Prove It': Learning to Do Development Differently at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, with Bernard Rivers

Occasional Speaker Series on Research Topics in Sustainable Development

"'Raise It, Spend It, Prove It': Learning to Do Development Differently at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria"

Speaker: Bernard Rivers, Executive Director of Aidspan

Hosted by Prof. William Clark, Science, Environment and Development Group

Thursday, 12 May 2005
4:00 - 5:30 pm
Location: Perkins Room, 4th Floor Rubenstein Building (formerly One Eliot Building), Center for International Development, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Abstract:

Bernard Rivers runs Aidspan, a small nonprofit organization whose mission is to reinforce the effectiveness of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund is a three-year-old public-private body that raises and disburses billions of dollars every year. It aspires, in effect, to be the world's largest fundraising operation and the world's largest grant-making operation.

Rivers, who is also editor of Aidspan’s Global Fund Observer, will describe the history of the Global Fund, and will discuss the many ways in which the Fund seeks to overcome some of the shortcomings of earlier forms of international financial assistance to developing countries. He will comment on some successes and failures in the Fund’s work, and will review the factors that determine its future chances of making a real difference to AIDS, TB and malaria.

He will also describe how his own organization, Aidspan, was established to serve as a watchdog of the Fund, and how Aidspan, just like the Fund, has sought to be entrepreneurial and innovative as it grows.

Biography:

Bernard Rivers is the founder and leader of Aidspan, a small US-based non-governmental organization (NGO) whose mission is to reinforce the effectiveness of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He also edits Aidspan’s Global Fund Observer newsletter (which is subscribed to by 7,500 readers in 170 countries), is co-author of several "Aidspan Guides" for Global Fund applicants, and leads Aidspan’s consulting services to developing-country AIDS projects.

Rivers is a UK-born US-based economist who is a leading expert on the Global Fund and has been granted observer status at Global Fund board meetings. In 2003 he visited China several times to facilitate the development of a successful $100 m. proposal to the Global Fund by China's Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM). In 2004 he provided in-depth assistance to the Nigeria CCM, and in 2005 he returned to China to provide further assistance to the China CCM.