U.S. Agencies
USAID, the US government agency responsible for administering foreign aid, turns 50 this year.
To celebrate, ONE, along with PSI, PATH, FHI 360, World Vision and USAID, are hosting a “The Power of 1 Percent,” an event to highlight USAID’s accomplishments over the last five decades and discuss upcoming challenges, on Monday, October 3 from 3 to 5 p.m. It will be followed by expert panel discussions on the future of US investments in global health.
You don’t have to live in the nation’s capital or be a VIP to attend this event — you can watch and participate right from your computer. We’ll have a live webstream on our blog (look out for it on Monday), and our partners will be taking and responding to questions on Twitter using the #WhyForeignAid hashtag.
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Elaine Kelley of the US Embassy Ouagadougou shares her experience visiting “self help” project sites in Burkina Faso. These projects are making a huge impact on the quality of life for many Burkinabé.
The US Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso will hold an Agreements Signing Ceremony in September for the 23 new micro-development projects it will support for small associations and communities in Burkina Faso. They plan to kick-off more than a dozen additional projects this month. These “self help” projects are a great example of how different US government agencies can work together to meet a common goal.
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Aysha House-Moshi from USAID shares examples of how her agency is serving the entire food continuum in Ethiopia. Read the original post on the USAID Impact blog.
A woman named Aisha holds her daughter at a therapeutic feeding camp in Ethiopia. Photo Credit: Aysha House-Moshi/USAID
I have a one-year-old little girl at home, just like Aisha, the mother I photographed during my visit to the drought-impacted region of Ethiopia. Just like this Aisha, I hope that I am nourishing my daughter’s body, mind, and spirit by providing her everything within my means. Unlike Aisha, my daughter weighs nearly three times more than her one-year-old little girl, and she has come to this therapeutic feeding camp because it is her best hope for food for her daughter and for herself.
While visiting Ethiopia last week, I saw examples of how USAID is serving the entire food continuum – food aid projects for the hungry, resilience projects for those able to work for food, and food security projects to support smallholder farmers who are delivering prized harvests to markets. All of these projects are making a difference, but as I looked at the growing numbers of hungry, risking their lives to migrate to camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, I couldn’t help but to focus on my fellow mothers risking everything to feed their children and feed our future.
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I recently spent some time in Definah, Liberia. Definah, literally translated from the local language to mean “in front of the bush,” is a small village about 80 miles outside Liberia’s capital city Monrovia. This small community is living proof of the tremendous progress Africa has witnessed in recent years in the fight against preventable and treatable diseases.
The entire population of Liberia is at high risk for malaria and malaria remains a leading cause of death for children. Children under 5 and pregnant women are the most affected groups. Approximately 40 percent of US global health assistance in Liberia is provided by the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) through USAID.
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Senator Bill Frist is on a trip to Kenya with Dr. Jill Biden and USAID Administrator Raj Shah to learn more about famine and the crisis in the Horn of Africa.
More than 29,000 young children have died of malnutrition and disease in Somalia in the past 90 days. We are now on our way to the Horn of Africa to see what more we as a nation can do.
Early this morning, our plane left Washington, D.C., bound for East Africa. I’m flying with Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden and USAID Administrator Raj Shah to study the famine’s effects on the lives of more than 12 million people, many of them children.
In fact, it is now being called “the children’s famine.”
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It’s not a secret that there are skeptics about aid effectiveness or critics of the US budget for international assistance. That’s why I was pleased to learn about the recent work of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) which proves that aid can not only be effective, but can also benefit the American economy.
An MCC energy project in Tanzania. Photo credit: Morgana Wingard/ONE.
Last week, I attended a conference hosted by the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) titled, “On the Cutting Edge of Aid Effectiveness: Best Practices and Lessons Learned from the Millennium Challenge Corporation.” The panel ofspeakers included Gayle Smith, the special assistant to the president and senior director of the National Security Council (you may have seen her tweets from our recent ONE-White House Twitter event), and Sheila Herrling, vice president for policy and evaluation at the MCC. This discussion was led by Jim Kolbe, who is now the co-chair of MFAN.
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UPDATE: Here are 3 questions we came up with to ask President Obama at tomorrow’s town hall. Please tweet whichever you like best, and hopefully the White House will answer! Tune in tomorrow at 2 PM ET live on Twitter:
@townhall How does economic growth in #Africa impact growth at home? #AskObama
@townhall Why does intl development matter in tough econ environment? #AskObama
@townhall How can trade, agric, health R&D for #Africa also benefit the US? #AskObama
I love to take short afternoon walks. My favorite route? A stroll down 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There’s always lots of photo-flashing tourists, sign-waving protesters and Blackberry-carrying workers to check out in front of the White House gates.
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