Recently, the White House hosted an online Q&A session on innovation for global development. Since the subject is a passion of mine, I was immediately prompted to submit a question to USAID Administrator Dr. Raj Shah.

Listen to Joe’s question here:

I try to do all that I can to mobilize faith-based institutions with congregations in Africa to get involved in serving their communities through development. I have seen examples of this on a small scale in Kenya, where one particular church denomination is utilizing local congregations to teach and train Kenyan nationals in areas such as agriculture and nutrition.

A highly organized network of 4,000 national churches is already in place, with property available to use for development education and training. The facilities could also be used as food distribution centers and medical clinics. The possibilities are endless.

This passion of mine led me to ask the question, “How can faith-based organizations with congregations in Africa be used as training facilities for the latest in development technology?” I was thrilled that my question was chosen, but even more encouraging was the response from Dr. Shah and Gayle Smith, special assistant to the President and senior director of the National Security Council.

In short, Dr. Shah explained that faith-based organizations currently play an important role in the developing world, citing an example of one congregation, Saddleback Church, which has sent more than 14,000 workers on development and health-oriented missions to Africa. If one congregation is capable of this, what could we do collectively as people of faith? Dr. Shah added that right now in Nairobi, Kenya, people living in extreme poverty are most likely already getting their healthcare and education from an institution of faith.

Gayle Smith added that networks of churches and other religious institutions are extremely valuable not only as providers of bed nets for malaria prevention, but also as educators on the proper use of these life-saving tools.

In summary, I was greatly encouraged to hear that these types of community partnerships are highly successful, and it further ignited my passion to mobilize congregations to get engaged in development projects overseas. What can we do as people of faith, moving forward, to make a profound impact on our world? As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

When I wake up, I groggily roll out of bed, and half-asleep, I jump into a hot shower. Then, I fill up my water bottle with cold water from the tap, brush my teeth with water from the faucet, and wash my hands. These simple amenities that we take for granted are truly luxuries. Because in Africa, 70 to 80 percent of disease is related to water. Most people don’t have a faucet with running water, or even clean water nearby that they can drink or brush their teeth with.

We visited a joint project with USAID and Rotary International that provides clean water to thousands of people in Afadjtator, Ghana. As we arrived, the townsfolk swarmed us with welcoming cheers. Though we didn’t build the wells they are benefiting from, our tax dollars did. The United States is contributing approximately $13.4 million to improve water and sanitation in Ghana over the next four years. And thanks to this join project in Afadjtator, 86,000 more people will be able to wake up in the morning and get a glass of clean water.

Captions, from top to bottom and right to left: New well build through the joint water and sanitation project with USAID and Rotary International; Woman from the community carrying water from the well back to her house; Ed Goeas walks with children from the community; Jen Pihlaja walks with children from the community; Women filling up at the new water pump; Sheila Nix, ONE’s US Executive Director cuts the ribbon with local chiefs for the newest water pump in the community; Laurie Moskowitz, ONE’s Senior Director of US campaigns, laughs with local community members.

Last week, the Brookings Institution hosted an event on US Aid and Transparency for Global Development. Administrator Rajiv Shah of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) gave a speech focused on the ways that USAID is fulfilling a government-wide commitment to increase transparency and accountability, both in relation to aid and to development more widely. Administrator Shah’s message was that we should keep pushing relentlessly, for it is only through a “more transparent, honest, and clear system” that citizens will understand the results we can achieve in development.

After the event, I had the opportunity to interview USAID’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning Tony Pipa on USAID’s transparency strategy and the work ahead:

Why does transparency and accountability matter for development?
First, it allows partner countries to better manage their aid flows, and also helps empower their citizens to hold their governments as well as donor governments to account. From our standpoint, it provides a better understanding of what we’re doing, where we’re doing it, how we’re doing it, and to what effect. And then there’s the international accountability component. It sheds light on commitments and progress that both the US and other donor countries and organizations make. Transparency that empowers citizens to hold their governments to account forces us to be more effective and to be better cooperators and coordinators, to engage in development cooperation that lowers our own transaction costs by making sure we’re as focused as possible, and -– as the Administrator was saying –- be relentless.

How should the US plan to measure the impact that enhanced transparency and accountability makes on development outcomes?
Our new evaluation policy pushes us to have an evaluation posted three months after it is complete, and the aspiration is to make 200 evaluations available over the next year. Project-based evaluations will test the development hypothesis underlying a particular project. Our new policy framework for the next five years outlines the objectives and principles underlying those objectives. We’re going to be very attentive to evaluating if the framework has been effective.

What is the US doing to promote both transparency and accountability, for instance in relation to natural resource revenues and budgets?
There is a lot of momentum coming from the top levels of the Administration and the White House for more transparency. It’s something we as an agency have been taking seriously. The Open Government Partnership is very broad, and while USAID is part of the foreign assistance piece of it, other agencies participate as well. In addition to getting USAID’s data out there with the foreign assistance dashboard, we are ensuring that our new evaluations policy, our other policies and strategies and the evaluations themselves are public.

How is the US pushing forward the transparency and accountability agenda as part of the G8 and the G20 this year?
For the G8, given we’re in the lead role, and transparency and accountability will figure prominently. It’s early in the process, but as we create a report that charts our progress, we’d like to describe more completely how we’ve changed to optimize success. Expect some innovations in format and the tools that we use to measure progress on the L’Aquila commitments. And while we want to be as transparent as possible on financial flows, we want to expand it beyond simply accounting. For the G20, in addition to our priorities on food security, infrastructure and investment, we’re looking for how you strategically integrate crosscutting issues to find solutions to complex challenges. I don’t think you’re going to improve food security without also improving infrastructure, and well functioning, transparent tax regimes to provide better and more sustainable local and domestic resources.

Any last words for our members?
We’re going to continue to hear from your members on how we’re doing — and that’s a productive dialogue. We are trying to not just make our data transparent, but make opportunities available for dialogue and consultation on our policies and country strategies as they are developed, so your members can continue to look for that.

Most people probably weren’t paying attention to the Washington Post business page on Dec 25. (Myself, I was trying to corral two toddlers and navigate a sea of Legos and torn paper). But for people in poor countries who are trying to lead their societies out of poverty, Christmas day brought good news: USAID is changing the way it works to get closer to the people it’s trying to help.

Dy Yong keeps the books for the rice Bank Committee so that everybody can see how it run and maintained at the Rice cooperative in Takom village, Battambang. The rice store committee has many members and they introduce villagers to the principles of trading rice to give them security at a much reduced rate than the market offers. Photo by Jim Holmes/Oxfam.

Since Administrator Rajiv Shah came on board, USAID has been trying to rebuild itself so it can build stronger partnerships with poor countries and their people. It’s based in the reality of good development, which is that development isn’t something done by USAID—development is done by poor people and poor countries themselves. In order to be a better partner, USAID needs to get closer to poor people to know better what they actually need and want. That means having more USAID people talking and working directly with people in poor countries.

This isn’t a new idea; it’s called “partnership,” and the hard-working people at USAID have been trying to do it since the agency was created 50 years ago—with varying degrees of success. The problem is that budget cuts in the 90’s gutted the agency’s ability to do this well. Budget cutters defined “efficiency” as more dollars managed by fewer people, rather than judging the depth and effectiveness of USAID’s partnerships. As a result, things deteriorated to the point where USAID contracting officers were each managing five times the amount of money that federal guidelines said they should. By necessity, USAID’s business model was reduced to “shoveling money out the door” rather than getting to know countries, communities, leaders, and their needs.

Increasingly, to manage this, USAID starting relying on “intermediaries”; often well-meaning partners like big NGOs and contractors that could manage the money for them. US-based NGOs and contractors each have distinct roles and contributions to make to development. But in this case, the way they were used was both a substitute for USAID expanding its own knowledge and expertise, as well as an impediment to change leaders in poor countries being able to tell the US government what they really needed.

Administrator Shah is trying to change that. The Dec. 25 Washington Post article unveiled his effort to get USAID back to a better business model, by cutting out the middlemen and putting more emphasis on building relationships directly with the people who are making development happen in their own countries. These are exactly the kind of people that the United States wants on our side: not because of charity or because they necessarily like us, but because they want the same things we do: a world that can fight back against problems like poverty, injustice, and disease.

These reforms have a rather bureaucratic sounding name: “Implementation and Procurement Reform.” But what they mean in practice is that USAID is making an effort to get back on the ground to work more closely with the people it’s trying to help. That means better value for American taxpayers, more power for change leaders in poor countries, and ultimately better progress in the fight against poverty.

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For those of you who missed our ONE Sabbath “Fight the Famine, Feed the Future” national conference call, we have an mp3 recording of the file that you can download here.

USAID’s Dr. Raj Shah gave us an update on the latest surrounding the famine in the Horn of Africa while ONE’s CEO Michael Elliott briefed our national network of faith leaders on ONE’s comprehensive hunger and agriculture campaigns. More than 13 million of our sisters and brothers in east Africa are vulnerable to hunger and lack of access to clean water at this time –- and there is something we can do about it!

During the fall season, and especially around Thanksgiving, it’s critical that we do all we can to fight the famine and secure a future where there is hunger no more. Get your local faith community involved and sign up for ONE Sabbath.

Fifty years ago today, in 1961, John F. Kennedy established the US Agency for International Development to unify US foreign assistance efforts and focus on long term development solutions. Today, we can look back and celebrate all that USAID has accomplished over the years and consider the future of foreign assistance.

In the last 50 years, USAID programs have contributed to incredible development results, all for less than 1 percent of the budget.

America’s foreign assistance has been a reflection of its moral values, and has helped make the world a more prosperous and secure place. But it certainly hasn’t been an easy or straight road. Over 50 years, the agency has gone through various changes in terms of its autonomy, its role, and its mandate. Last week, CSIS hosted a forum with four former USAID Administrators and the current Administrator, Raj Shah, to discuss the legacy and the future of USAID. While they each shared different stories about what the agency accomplished and how it had changed under each administration, they all were able to agree on the importance of having a strong, elevated agency for foreign assistance.

But there hasn’t always been agreement across agencies, or from Congress, on whether and how to deliver US aid, and what the purposes of our aid should be. Fragmented objectives, along with heavy bureaucratic oversight, has sometimes meant that aid dollars have not been able to reach the people that need it most. But recent reforms within USAID are working to address these pitfalls, build on the accomplishments of past USAID leaders, and create a stronger USAID that’s more responsive and more effective in fighting poverty and disease and addressing long term constraints to growth.

Recently, USAID announced its new Policy Framework for 2011 to 2015. The policy framework will become a regular exercise every four years, and lays out USAID’s core development priorities, operational principles and explains how these principles will be applied across programs. Although many of the policies presented aren’t new, this document goes a long way towards organizing and clarifying the mission and objectives of USAID. And this clarity and focus will be greatly needed as USAID seeks to defend its budget and its programs to a Congress looking to make cuts and reduce spending. At ONE we applaud the hard work of USAID and will continue to use our voice to support initiatives like Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative that save lives and create opportunities for the world’s poorest.

Elisa Morgan dances with a group of Village Reporters in Lwak, Kenya. Photo credit: Morgana Wingard

A family living in a mud hut at the end of a dusty trail in east Africa has less than you would ever imagine. No television. No toys. No running water. Certainly not a refrigerator filled with fresh food. Mom probably sleeps on a small rickety cot with a pile of brothers and sisters. Dad sleeps on the ground.

They might live near a polluted river where they bathe and collect drinking water. Or maybe mom rises at 4 a.m. to walk eight miles to a spigot where she can wait in line for two hours to fill their bucket. They grow their own food, maybe corn and sweet potatoes. They don’t have an irrigation system so they’re entirely dependent on rain, and when the rains don’t come there’s no food or water.

How does a family like this survive when droughts and famine sweep across their country? Often they receive some assistance from nonprofits, churches and the United States government. A little extra food and water is the difference between life and death for a family faced with drought and famine.

And right now, these people in East Africa are struggling through the worst drought in 60 years, the worst famine in 20 years and ongoing violence.

The ONE Moms and I were able to discuss this issue recently with Dr. Jill Biden, USAID Administrator Raj Shah and National Security Council Senior Director Gayle Smith at a round table at the White House. We talked about our recent trips to Kenya, our ongoing work on global development and voiced our support for US-funded programs that save lives in poverty-stricken Africa.

“It’s so bad. It’s worse than you can ever imagine,” Dr. Jill Biden told us.

Over the summer, Dr. Biden visited East Africa and consoled women and children in a Somalia refugee camp, the largest in the world. Originally built to accommodate 90,000 people, it’s now overflowing with nearly half a million impoverished people. In Somalia, a child is dying every six minutes.

We were invited to the White House because of our trip to Kenya on a trip with ONE. We observed US investments saving lives, and now we are bringing our experience back to Washington to let lawmakers know that these programs are effective and working. We visited a hospital where doctors treat kids with malaria, watched a health care worker test a family for HIV, and brought a new mom fresh food and water.

On this trip, I realized that the United States is good at saving lives, and that’s why I feel strongly that we need to do all that we can to help these people in the Horn of Africa. Here are four more reasons why I think we should support foreign assistance:

Tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m., ONE members of faith will have the opportunity to join a special call with USAID Administrator Raj Shah. The event will update our national network of churches, local faith groups and ONE members on the famine in the Horn of Africa and discuss FWD, USAID’s initiative to fight famine, war and drought. Michael Elliott, ONE’s new president and CEO, will also be joining us to give an update on ONE’s overall campaign on agriculture.

This call will also help formally launch our ONE Sabbath Thanksgiving campaign, “Fight the Famine, Feed the Future.” Throughout the entire month of November, faith communities across the country will call on world leaders to help break the cycle of famine. So far, 200 individuals and faith groups are participating — but of course, the more voices, the better. We hope you’ll join our call tomorrow afternoon! RSVP for our event here.

Today, USAID launches FWD, a public awareness campaign to elevate the profile of the crisis in the Horn of Africa. The title is an acronym for famine, war and drought — three devastating problems that are threatening millions of lives in Eastern Africa right now.

The concept of the campaign is simple: use social media to forward facts about the crisis to your online networks. Why? Because 52 percent of the general public say that they have not heard or seen anything about the famine in the Horn of Africa. It’s a shocking figure, but by sharing what we know with others, we can help bring this number down — and in turn, inspire more Americans to take action against this catastrophic situation.

At 12:30 EDT today, USAID Administrator Raj Shah will be answering your questions about the crisis in a live webcast. Send your questions to him via Twitter and Facebook, and feel free to ask him about the new campaign, too.

As the campaign says, we are a country “founded on values of justice, opportunity and compassion,” and “when we witness suffering on such a massive scale, Americans are stirred to act.” So, do your part as an American and take action against the famine: FWD a fact on to a friend.