Membership

Commission on the Advancement of Women Annual Breakfast: Faith Traditions and Development: A Powerful Emerging Force for Women’s Empowerment
How do we mobilize the combined force of faith traditions and the international development community to achieve gender equality and end world poverty? This interactive-style dialogue amongst prominent leaders from the women’s, faith, and development communities will explore the positive intersections between women’s empowerment and faith traditions for poverty eradication globally. The breakfast will also launch the new Women, Faith, and Development Alliance (WFDA), coconvened by InterAction, Women’s Edge, World Conference of Religions for Peace, and the Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation/ Washington National Cathedral. In the tradition of past CAW breakfasts, participants will have the opportunity to strategize on ways to use the ideas presented to increase investments for women and girls around the world as a priority for reducing global poverty.

Semi-Annual Humanitarian Policy and Practice Committee Meeting
Open to committee members and invited guests only, please.

Exhibit Hall Open

InterAction Board of Directors Meeting
Open to InterAction Board members only.

Opening Plenary and Luncheon

Keynote Address: George Soros, Founder of the Open Society Institute

WORKSHOPS

What Does it Take to Assess International NGO Program Effectiveness and How Do We Get There as a Sector?
InterAction has adopted principles for demonstrating international NGO effectiveness that apply to all member agencies. During this session, participants will receive a report of a survey being conducted that seeks forms of evidence, with which international NGOs can demonstrate their compliance with these principles and standards. Through presentations by leaders from within the international NGO community as well as others who fund or study international NGOs, and through group interactions, we will discuss expectations and approaches for assessment and for what is needed to build capacity to strengthen the effectiveness of our interventions. Breakout groups will further discuss appropriate applications of such standards within three communities of practice within the InterAction consortium: development, relief, and advocacy. We will address such questions as a) What forms of evidence of compliance with these standards would be expected by our agencies? b) How can and should such evidence be collected and shared? and c) What might be needed to strengthen international NGOs’ capacities to meet these expectations for accountability of effectiveness?

NGO Security Threats and Responses
This workshop will present the conclusions of recent research on security threats to NGOs abroad and responses to the growing insecure environment in the field undertaken by InterAction and the United Nations. A brief overview will be followed by an open forum affording attendees the opportunity to discuss methods, policies and practices in managing NGO security threats, including compliance with InterAction’s recently adopted minimum operating staff security standards (MOSS) and the implementation of “Saving Lives Together,” the UN/NGO agreement to cooperate on security issues.

Civil Society Engagement: From Rhetoric to Reality
In all recent major bilateral and multilateral development initiatives, ranging from the Millennium Development Goals to the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to the Millennium Challenge Account, civil society is expected to play a critical role in both policy formulation and program implementation. This workshop is intended to explore the realities, challenges, and opportunities of civil society participation in these initiatives. What does such participation require of civil society in terms such as financial resources, political space, knowledge, and technical and organizing capacity? And what must bilateral and multilateral donors and aid recipient governments do to engage fully with civil society?

Reception with Exhibitors
Join us in welcoming our Forum 2007 exhibitors. Come and browse the exhibit area, meet your colleagues and learn about important programs and services.

12th Annual Awards Dinner
Join us in honoring individuals whose extraordinary efforts in the media and in the field have made a tangible difference for those struggling to overcome poverty, disease and discrimination in the developing world.

Sam Ford, ABC Channel 7 News Anchor, will be the Master of Ceremonies

Exhibit Hall Open

WORKSHOPS

Ten Bold Programs (CEOs-only Affinity Group)
This closed session is designed specifically for NGO CEOs to share the most cutting-edge program(s) or activity(ies) their organization has undertaken either in the field or in relating to the American public in the past two years. From among the innovations listed, up to ten themes will be selected for more in-depth discussions in small groups, focusing on how these programs and activities can be replicated and brought to scale, and ultimately presented as bold actions that NGOs can adopt for relief and development and engaging the public.

Investigating Allegations of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
This session will use the work of the Building Safer Organizations (BSO) project that trains NGO staff to manage and investigate allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries, and the Kenya 15 member Executive Board on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse, to frame a discussion on ways in which concerned organizations and networks can, and successfully have, worked to improve attention to issues of sexual exploitation and abuse. It will also include an interactive exercise on managing investigations, and cover the UN Secretary-General’s bulletin on sexual exploitation and abuse as well as the Statement of Commitment that was recently endorsed by UN and non-UN agencies at a high-level meeting in New York. The session will close with an overview of BSO’s future, particularly its proposed integration into the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership- International and conducting a beneficiary-based evaluation of the statement of commitment on addressing sexual exploitation and abuse as promulgated at the December 4, 2006 high-level meeting in New York.

Establishing Common Global Standards for NGO Professional Conduct
As the universe of NGO watchdogs, public and private regulators, and other NGO standards-setting entities becomes increasingly crowded and complex, many fear that the sector could become so overburdened by standards, compliance audits, and other requirements that these accountability systems could collapse under their collective weight. This session is designed to begin a dialogue with other NGO platforms, donors, and regulators on whether and/or how it might be possible to reach consensus around a finite set of standards that could be universally accepted as supporting the core principles of NGO professional conduct. The session will also discuss whether this would be desirable and/or feasible.

Poverty Reduction and Development Assistance: What is Necessary to Achieve the First Millennium Development Goal?
When 191 governments, including the U.S., signed the Millennium Declaration in 2000, they pledged to work collectively to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.” With the midpoint to 2015 fast approaching in 2008, the development community must consider the extent to which development assistance is enabling the world’s poor to uplift themselves. While virtually all donors have made poverty reduction a stated priority, disagreement remains as to what that means in terms of policy prescriptions, program strategies, and resource allocations. This session will present different views on how to make development assistance a truly effective force for ending poverty.

InterAction General Membership Meeting
Open to InterAction CEOs or their designees only, please.

Affinity Groups
Space has been reserved for spontaneous informal sessions to take place among NGO professionals engaged in common thematic areas of work (e.g., Chief Operating Officers, NGO development (fundraising) officers, faith-based NGO leaders, etc.). This space has been reserved to permit NGO leaders to engage in peer-topeer exchanges, if they so choose, and to provide opportunities to network and to discuss how InterAction can best support their work. No formal program has been developed or designed for these discussions. If an affinity group meets and/or is established during this period, any findings or conclusions can be communicated to InterAction’s Office of Membership Services for follow-up and support, at kgiunta@interaction.org. Designated InterAction staff will also be assigned to monitor and lend support to these sessions during the Forum.

Annual Leet Award and Lunch Plenary: Transforming Transformational Diplomacy
A common critique of the reforms being undertaken by USAID as part of the Transformational Diplomacy Initiative is that it does not attempt to shift U.S. resources to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people and covers only approximately 10 percent of all U.S. aid to developing countries. This session will explore different visions of what would constitute a truly transformational approach to foreign assistance.

Advocacy Day Preparation Session
The Advocacy Day preparatory session will present an overview of the issues and logistics for Advocacy Day meetings. Participants will be paired with their team members and receive a final briefing from InterAction staff, along with talking points and other materials to prepare them for their meetings on Capitol Hill.

Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill

Exhibit Hall Open

WORKSHOPS

Addressing Needs in Transition
Historically, there have been significant gaps in addressing the transitional needs of fragile states and communities emerging from conflict where short-term relief is no longer necessary yet the conditions for stability required for longer-term development have not been met. This workshop will look at this issue, identify main gaps in programming, discuss the role of the UN Early Recovery Cluster and new U.S. government initiatives, and provide examples of best practices.

Measuring the Impact of Relief and Development Communications
The goal of this session is to increase participants’ impact and reach through effective communication. It will help participants analyze their current outreach efforts and demonstrate how to make the most of internal and external communications vehicles.

Using Evidence to Influence Policy: Why? What? How? (Part I of a two-part session)
Of all the actors involved in the debates around development policy, it is the NGOs, both Northern and Southern, that can bring consistent ‘on the ground’ perspectives to bear on these debates. Through their day-to-day work with poor communities, NGOs see first-hand the impact of policy on the communities with which they work. What the NGO community as a whole has not yet consistently managed to do is effectively harness this knowledge to influence development policy debates. This workshop is designed to build knowledge and skills on what constitutes credible evidence from the field, effective strategies for gathering it, and the challenges in utilizing it to influence policy. The workshop is comprised of two sessions. Session I will be an interactive workshop based on the Canadian experience in agricultural policy reform. We highly recommended that individuals attend both sessions.

WORKSHOPS

Women’s Caucus (Affinity Group/Workshop)
The Caucus is designed to provide women in the InterAction community with the opportunity to network and discuss InterAction’s work on women’s empowerment and gender equality. Focus topics will be identified based on participants’ interests and may include: women’s leadership in international NGOs, gender in InterAction’s recently adopted new strategic directions and goals, accelerating gender integration in member agencies, and gender issues and InterAction advocacy.

Using Evidence to Influence Policy: Why? What? How? (Part II of a two-part session)
Of all the actors involved in the debates around development policy, it is the NGOs, both Northern and Southern, that can bring consistent ‘on the ground’ perspectives to bear on these debates. Through their day-to-day work with poor communities, NGOs see first-hand the impact of policy on the communities with which they work. What the NGO community as a whole has not yet consistently managed to do is effectively harness this knowledge to influence development policy debates. This workshop is designed to build knowledge and skills on what constitutes credible evidence from the field, effective strategies for gathering it, and the challenges in utilizing it to influence policy. The workshop is comprised of two sessions. Session II will look at a case study involving the Women’s Edge Coalition and the Millennium
Challenge Corporation. We highly recommended that individuals attend both sessions.

In Search of a Perfect Match: NGO Partnerships with the Private Sector
Increasingly, public-private partnerships between the for-profit, nonprofit and public sectors are leveraging resources, technologies, markets, and innovation on behalf of the world’s poor. This session will profile and examine several recent, successful partnerships between corporations, private foundations, official development agencies, and NGOs, both international and local. Presenters will discuss both the opportunities and challenges these new relationships offer.

Closing Lunch Plenary: Civil-Military Relations
Spokespersons for the Department of Defense (DOD) and USAID will discuss relations between NGOs and the U.S. military.