Future Issues: Indigenous PVOs in the Third World and Global Education at Home

For private voluntary organizations (PVOs) staff members long future they face two key issues: the rise of "indigenous PVOs" (IPVOs) in the Third World and the emergence of "global education" at home. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a few other US foundations conduct investigations to make sure that no local group is capable of providing a given service before funding a proposal from a US PVO; increasingly they choose the IPVO. In 1980, Agency for International Development showed its commitment to the IPVOs by funding an American PVO, Planning Assistance, to provide management counseling strictly for IPVOs in Latin America. The fact that Americans have not always greeted this new internationalization with understanding and enthusiasm can be explained partly by the nostalgic "we're number one" mentality. Most American and international PVOs have tried to build antidotes to this "dependency phenomenon" into their programs by deliberately stimulating local community involvement.