Value Realignment Initiative

You’re driving a bus on a freezing day. It’s full. At the foot of a hill into town, one more person begs to board. How to decide who gets to ride the bus?

Our society does this:
Force everyone off.
Charge for a new ticket just enough so the right number reboard.

Would you run your bus that way?

Building the Future of Aid—Starting Now: Strategic Lessons from a Crisis Despite what administration officials have claimed about preserving life-saving work, many of the programs delivering interventions known to save the most lives per dollar spent have not received the ...

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📎 www.cgdev.org/blog/buildin...

But more than that—this is a model worth learning from.
Speed + legitimacy.
Expertise + humility.
A system built for urgency, not bureaucracy.

The result: a curated list of projects that could absorb money today and deliver outsized impact.

It’s a pipeline—prepped by experts and grounded in local reality.

Think of it as:
➡️ the shortlist you wish existed
➡️ the guide funders say they don’t have
➡️ the future of aid, if we’re serious

Then they did the hard part: vetting.

Not just “does it look good on paper?”
But:
✅ Is it evidence-based?
✅ Is it urgent?
✅ Is it scalable?
✅ Is it fundable—right now?

Their methodology is transparent, unbiased and rigorous.

Their results, open source.

They didn’t rely on second-hand reports.

They went straight to the source by interviewing:
→ Local orgs
→ Field project leads
→ Governments and multilaterals orgs

They asked the orgs to 'radically' reimagine their project: With limited funds, how much support is needed to maximize project impact?

As others looked on in horror, @cgdev.org hired some of the ex-USAID leaders and aid experts to answer the most pressing question:

"Of all the projects that lost funding, which are the most urgent, the most effective, the most life-saving?"

And then they built a process to answer that question...

Thread on the most promising list of aid projects you've never heard of (yet):

What happened when the world’s biggest bilateral aid agency (USAID) gets forcibly shut down overnight?

Millions are left hungry, without medicine, without support.

But recently, a small team stepped up (@cgdev.org)

I remember when my primary school level idea of America as 'good guys' of the world was brutally disbanded. However now seeing all the amazing work that #USAID *had been* doing, I am reminded of the ideals many Americans share. Why can't we make that part of America great again? Bring back #PEPFAR

Lol. Love to see the shrimp welfare project having a sense of humor. Great promotion for an innovative new charity type that seems to understand its perception challenge.

Almost 300m people at risk of death through starvation – report Aid cuts, conflict, climate and economic shocks contribute to sixth consecutive rise in numbers facing ‘high levels of food insecurity’

At a time when international aid is dropping and child malnutrition numbers have risen six years in a row, it's clear that things are out of whack. #realignyourvalues

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I write about the need to reframe the things that really matter. Follow for more.