COMMON GROUND: USAID

The Iowa Connection

My dad was a small-town lawyer and the king of cliches, but his words of wisdom often rang true. When I read quotes and op-ed pieces praising the “gutting” of USAID” one of those cliches came to mind: “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.”

Every administration has priorities and presidents appoint and hire people to implement them. That may include taking money from some areas previous administrations supported and moving it to priority areas. That’s the reality of winning or losing elections.

SPRINTERS AND MARATHONERS

In an agency like USAID, there are sprinters and marathoners. Political appointees only have four years to accomplish the goals of the president. Career employees have the span of their careers. This creates a professional tension between the employees representing an administration and the employees who more generally serve their agency and the American people. I came to understand this relationship when President Obama asked me to serve as Senior Advisor for International Education at USAID from 2013-2017.

Education was not one of the top priorities of the Obama Administration at USAID, but Congresswoman Nita Lowey, a champion of international education, had been trying to get the Education for All bill passed for many years without success. It focused on an all-of-government approach to providing education resources for developing countries especially in our diplomatic priorities like South Sudan, Afghanistan and Haiti.

Like most US citizens, I knew very little about how the US delivered aid to other countries when I took the job offered to me by my boss, Administrator Raj Shah. I knew of President Kennedy’s Peace Corps, which sends young volunteers to developing countries. Many Peace Corps volunteers became employees at USAID when it was created in 1961 to provide aid to countries in crisis because of natural disasters and war. To begin with the aid was food. Eventually the mission expanded to include business, energy, agriculture, health and education.

A LOT TO LEARN

I taught in rural public schools for 25 years. I also taught college freshman English and journalism in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa where Tom and I came to work and raise a family. Later, as First Lady of Iowa, I started a literacy foundation which expanded to focus on tech literacy in partnership with Verizon and the National Center for Family Literacy. In 2012 I ran for congress in Iowa’s 4^th District. I brought these skills to my job as Special Advisor for International Education at USAID, but I had a lot to learn. As it turned out, I would have excellent teachers.

One of them was Jeff Mettille from Dubuque, Iowa. When I spoke with him recently, he said, “For many, USAID was the first experience people around the world had with the United States. It represented the best of us. It represented community, caring for your neighbor, looking out for your fellow man, and that is gone now.”

I quickly learned that USAID had assembled a team of professionals second to none. They were all experts in their fields with multiple degrees. Many of them chose to work for the federal government because that’s where they saw they could have the biggest impact, even if they could have earned more in the private sector. They allocated resources, and made decisions about awarding contracts to organizations which would help carry out our education priorities.

I met Foreign Service Officers who represent USAID in missions co-located near embassies in the developing countries where we work. Every three years, they move with their families to a new country living in difficult environments to monitor and support USAID programs.

250 MILLION CHILDREN CAN’T READ

At the time, we had three priorities— teaching 250 million students in the world how to read; helping adolescents prepare for and access the job market; continuing the mission of helping to stabilize people in dire circumstances. My colleagues continued to educate themselves, to develop tools to evaluate what they were doing and didn’t think about spending taxpayer dollars on strategies that hadn’t been proven to work.

They were willing to put themselves and their families at risk, because research showed that Americans would be safer if children, especially women in developing countries, knew how to read. These countries would become our trading-partners, and their young adults would become employees, not the pawns of terrorists.

What they didn’t do well was educate the public they served about their work, with a small amount of public money.

My career colleagues told me that Congress doesn’t allow federal employees to use federal dollars to explain their work to the people who employ them. As someone who knew people serving in Congress, as a journalist and teacher, I set out to educate the public.

I visited the countries where we work. I met with companies and non- governmental agencies who implement USAID programs. I introduced myself to US non-profits who support foreign aid. I spoke with 75 congressional leaders. I traveled to college campuses that receive USAID funding. For instance, Indiana University trained reading teachers for Malawi and helped USAID create a digital library to help teachers in remote areas access books for their students.

USAID: THE IOWA CONNECTION

In Iowa, I talked with parents of soldiers in our military serving in Afghanistan. Their sons and daughters helped build schools and made it safer for 8 million more kids to go to school and learn to read, more than two-thirds of them girls. No one can take that education away.

Developing countries are much like Iowa in the early 1900’s when my grandmother got to attend college for a year at Iowa Wesleyan. Thanks to the Methodists and other denominations, small colleges across the country gave rural kids a chance at higher education. This is what we’re doing now in developing countries like Pakistan, where I visited a university USAID helped build. Education makes the world a safer place.

SAVE THE CHILDREN

I worked with Save the Children, one of our partners in Jordan, where their government was training teachers to help Syrian refugee kids continue their schooling. The Lions Clubs International provided eye exams and glasses in Macedonia, Haiti, and Ethiopia. US members of organizations like Lions, Rotary and Kiwanis are proud of their international work with USAID. Catholic Relief Services is one of our many religious-affiliated partners in places like South Sudan. CRS often sent workers to places USAID employees could not safely go. USAID also partners with aid agencies from other developed countries, each country focusing on a particular geographic area or education specialty.

At USDA I was able to find ways to coordinate efforts between the two agencies to assure that kids in school got the benefits of school feeding. Students can’t learn if they’re hungry, so cooperation between government agencies is essential. I traveled with Second Lady Jill Biden in Laos to visit schools and talk with the World Food Program about nutrition.

These collaborations with other departments of government were what Congresswoman Lowey wanted to codify in law before she retired. The bill was moving at the end of 2016 as I left my job at USAID. It became law as The READ ACT during the first Trump Administration.

There is room for improvement in every department of government. Because USAID employees spend so much time living and working in developing countries, it’s easy for them to associate more closely with their host countries than the states and cities where they grew up. That’s why they come home every few years to work in the Washington office.

I often felt like I was educating my team about how the American political system works, explaining the importance of talking with congressional members and educating Americans about foreign aid. Now my colleagues are at the mercy of people who call them insubordinate and not aligned with American values.

THE BEST OF US

Like their counterparts at the State Department and the Department of Defense, they are the best of us, representative of American values, part of the triangle of foreign policy. I was proud to know and work with them.

While there may be facets of USAID that need improving, priorities of the administration that require focus, and even some redistribution of funds, let’s not “throw out the baby with the bathwater”.

I delivered this TED-X talk at George Washington University in 2015 to educate the public about the work that USAID does around the world to teach 250 million children to read. The Iowa Connection is Alma Van Allen, supporter of libraries and mother of Dr. James Van Allen, a Mt. Pleasant native who discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belts. You can watch it here.