Private Voluntary Organizations In The U.s. Foreign Aid

Private voluntary organization (PVO) is a term supposedly invented by theUSAID, and applied to those nongovernmental agencies that cooperated with it andother international organizations in development assistance. They are thenongovernmental and nonprofit organizations that engaged in relief and developmentaid abroad.The article generally introduced their definition, historical development and thephilosophy of aid, analyzed their role in distributing aid and development assistancethrough two typical examples. The relations between private voluntary organizationsand the U.S. government, especially the USAID, is also an important content here.This kind of agencies is independent entities, but also can be seen as theimportant intermediary of the government assistance. The latter is supporting for agreater PVO role in delivering aid. But compared with the government and thebusiness sector, PVO doesn't own the financial power and the for-profit nature. Theyhave to depend on their funding, but such relations produced a result that the PVOs,especially the bigger ones, are becoming increasingly dependent on the USAID'scontracts and grants.Although PVOs provide only a small segment of the globe's developmentassistance, they have performed a vital role in targeting assistance for the emergencyrelief needs or refugees from natural and humane disasters as well as in servicing thelonger-term development needs of the third world. Compared with the bilateral andmultilateral aid agencies, they are considered more effective in delivery efficiency, too.