Global Partnership for Social Accountability Continues to Grow, with New Contributions from Dominican Republic, Ford Foundation | WPN World People News

The Dominican Republic has become the first country in the global South to join the group of donors who are funding the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA), a program launched by the World Bank Group in 2012 to strengthen public-sector performance and meet governance challenges in developing countries.

The Government of the Dominican Republic has joined such GPSA donors as the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations and the Aga Khan Foundation USA, in a reflection of the government’s commitment to create stronger social accountability mechanisms and to pursue governance reforms as a means to end poverty.

The GPSA is already active in the Dominican Republic, supporting a $730,000 project by Intermon Oxfam working to coordinate and scale up social accountability processes aimed at improving budget accountability in the education, agriculture, water and sanitation, and public housing sectors. Using locally driven social accountability processes that target issues and problems in specific sectors of the economy and society, the project aims to generate evidence-based and continuous feedback to be used by national authorities focusing on budget priorities and service delivery.

The GPSA project, which was launched in 2014, is helping facilitate dialogue between civil society organizations and the ministries in Dominican Republic to address service delivery problems in the education, agriculture, water and sanitation, and public housing sectors. As a result of this, civil society organizations, community-based organizations, and public sector institutions, are working together to provide citizens with access to information and enhance collaboration between government and civil society in pursuit of improved performance and quality of public spending.

In addition, the Ford Foundation has announced a new contribution of US$1 million thereby renewing its commitment of support to the program. In 2012, after the World Bank’s initial investment of $20 million, the Ford Foundation made a commitment to the GPSA Trust Fund of $3 million. To date, the funds have been allocated toward GPSA’s grants portfolio, as well as toward the knowledge and capacity-building components of the GPSA.

The Ford Foundation has been an active working partner of the GPSA, underscoring Ford’s commitment to worldwide efforts on social change, democratic values, poverty and justice, international cooperation, and human achievement.

Source: World Bank