Posted on November 14, 2012

Foundation Center Endorses World Bank's Open Aid Partnership

The Foundation Center has announced its endorsement of the Open Aid Partnership, a World Bank-led effort to improve the openness and effectiveness of development assistance worldwide.

Established by the World Bank Institute and its donor partners, including foundations and civil society organizations, OAP works to produce a collaborative Open Aid Map that helps improve the coordination, efficiency, transparency, and accountability of development assistance; support developing countries in building their own mapping platforms; promote citizen feedback initiatives to better monitor their impact and foster accountability; and build the capacity of civil society, data journalists, and citizens to use open aid data.

The Foundation Center's expertise in knowledge management, its role as a driver of transparency, and its global philanthropy data resources align with OAP's approach to facilitating positive change in the arena of international aid. To date, OAP has been endorsed by eight countries — Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — as well as by InterAction, an alliance of U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations; the grassroots advocacy organization ONE; and the World Bank.

"This partnership will help improve development results on the ground," said Aleem Walji, director, Innovation Labs, at WBI. "We will create an open and common mapping platform to translate project information into easy-to-understand visual information at the country level. So, whether you are a government official, journalist, student, NGO representative, or a citizen trying to understand what's happening in your country or within a local community, you will be able to easily find and see the data."