ABSTRACT
In 1995, the Canadian government announced a foreign policy statement which included official development assistance (ODA) in “Canada in the World, the Government’s 1995 Foreign Policy Statement.” Unlike the situation in Canada, Japanese ODA policy formulation was part of Japan’s foreign policy under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Canada taps into the knowledge of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), either Canadian or local, with whom relationships have been developed over many years. Canadian International Development Agency assisted in training NGO and non-governmental institution (NGI) staff in the latest ODA tools being developed in areas such as project planning, monitoring, and evaluation. With the scarcity of ODA professionals in Japanese embassies in many developing countries, the embassies are increasingly calling on Japanese International Cooperation Agency staff to participate in donor coordination meetings. For Canada, NGOs and NGIs represented not only a way to reach out at the people-to-people level, but also an opportunity for Canadians to personally become involved in ODA.
