Macroeconomic Literacy Training
ActionAid offers activists, social movements and civil society organizations the opportunity to learn about how International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending conditions restrict the ability of developing countries to hire the teachers and healthcare workers they need. We need social movements and activists in the United States to join their voices with our partners in the global south to demand change. To help make this possible, ActionAid is offering customized training for interested groups.
ActionAid’s critique of unnecessarily restrictive IMF policies has been bolstered by a report from the IMF’s own Independent Evaluation Office (IEO). That was followed by an analysis from the Center for Global Development (CGD) suggesting that the IMF has not done enough to explore more expansionary options to increase public spending. There is also a large amount of peer-reviewed economic analysis to support ActionAid’s critique.
To help activists to turn our analysis and this supporting evidence into effective advocacy for policy change, ActionAid’s IMF Project partners with economists, unions, and social movements in Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone and the United States to train citizens to understand the economics behind restrictive policies. When activists and the public have the knowledge to engage their governments and the media in debate on these policies, they build accountability to affected rights-holders.
The IMF Project includes four sets of introductory Macroeconomic Literacy Trainings spread over two years (2007-09) for health, education, HIV/AIDS and women’s rights advocacy organizations. The trainings are held with national stakeholders in each of four countries - Kenya, Sierra Leone, Malawi and the United States. These trainings offer national stakeholders, economists and civil society advocates insight into the impacts of the IMF’s unnecessarily restrictive spending policies and underscore the benefits of more expansionary alternative policies for increasing social spending and public investment in future years.
- View the complete 3-Day Program of ActionAid’s second Economic Literacy Trainings for US NGOs, held at George Washington University’s Marvin Center in Washington D.C. on December 4-6, 2007.
- The complete 3-Day Program of ActionAid USA’s first Economic Literacy Training, held in March 13-15, 2007 in Washington D.C. will be posted soon.
Attendees of the trainings have included US-based advocates who are interested in learning about how IMF policies impact on the ability of low-income countries to increase public spending on wages for hiring more doctors, nurses and teachers.
