There are now more and more privately-initiated and often small-scale development initiatives seeking to achieve development at a very grassoots level.
Kookie Habtegaber recently drafted a study for Euforic on the motivations and activities of such efforts in the Netherlands. She found that the main motivation for these private cooperation initiatives (PCI) is solidarity; further that their founders exhibit high commitment to their causes and that most initiatives were set-up after some sort of close personal contacts with people abroad. The effectiveness of these initiatives is not easy to pinpoint, but it is clear that they, with their personal approach, are a vital future bridge between North and South.
Read the full report (pdf). Visit Euforic's civil society dossier.