The Obama Administration recently tapped Cameron Sinclair — the founder of one of our favorite organizations, Architecture for Humanity — to serve on an advisory committee for volunteer foreign aid (ACVFA). The committee will help the present administration deal with the decisions and interactions surrounding aid given by the US government to private organizations providing assistance to people in need around the world.
The ACVFA, “serves as a link between the U.S. Government and private voluntary organizations (PVOs) active in humanitarian assistance and development work overseas,” according to its website. The committee is comprised of 30 private citizens that have deep personal knowledge of international development.
Sinclair founded Architecture for Humanity and the Open Architecture Network as resources that help put the skills of trained architects in touch with community projects around the world. The organization provides free building plans from its projects large and small and has helped organizations around the world build safe, environmentally friendly buildings. No doubt Sinclair’s first hand knowledge from his work will provide the Obama Administration an inside look on how best to help people in need around the world to build — and rebuild — safe communities.
+ The Open Architecture Network
+The Advisory Committee on Volunteer Foreign Aid
Via Triple Pundit
All images from the Open Architecture Network
Aid is seldom given from motives of pure altruism; for instance it is often given as a means of supporting an ally in international politics. It may also be given with the intention of influencing the political process in the receiving nation. Whether one considers such aid helpful may depend on whether one agrees with the agenda being pursued by the donor nation in a particular case. During the conflict between communism and capitalism in the twentieth century, the champions of those ideologies, the Soviet Union and the United States, each used aid to influence the internal politics of other nations, and to support their weaker allies.
What will Cameron do by working for Obama. Foreign aid has been a sort of a taboo to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-E6sQ9DvI