Washington D.C.
Transcript
PAUL WEISENFELD: Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us. Thanks to everyone who's here in person, and for folks who are online – we're thrilled to have this first ACVFA public meeting of 2024. Really, very appreciative of the Administrator, we know there's so much going on in the world and she's stretched in a lot of ways. So we appreciate you taking some time to spend with us. I also, before we get into questions, I did also want to say thank you publicly to Sophia Lajaunie, who's done so much to help make ACVFA a group that actually works. And we're sad to see her go, but we really appreciate everything that you've done, Sophia. I don't see where she's standing now, but – oh, she's in the back.
And we're excited to hear from ACVFA’s newest member Peter Laugharn in the first panel. So we have a lot to cover. Let's jump right into it. There are a lot of important topics, a lot of things going on in the world. I wanted to start, Administrator, with kind of a topic that's on so many of our minds as so many of us are working on humanitarian crises around the world, and the one that many of us are involved in is the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Many people in this room are seized with that issue, and I know you are as well. USAID is one of the leading responders to humanitarian crises and to the world. It's been so for many years, I would say probably is the leading responder, not one of the leading responders. So we'd love to hear you share a little bit about what USAID is doing in this difficult situation to secure humanitarian relief.
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much, Paul. And let me before I answer it just thank everybody for being here. And specifically, of course, the ACVFA board members who are giving so much of their time to help USAID become an agency even more fit for purpose in a world of interlocking crises.
The situation in Gaza is an extremely difficult one, as the people of Gaza are facing catastrophic levels of insecurity – whether food insecurity or an inability to access medical care – an increase, as you all know, in waterborne diseases. And I want to, I'll say a word about USAID and everything our teams are doing, but I also want to emphasize the importance of diplomacy. Because Secretary [Antony] Blinken is in the region this week, today, trying to secure an extended pause that would offer not only relief from the war, which has costs nearly 30,000 civilian lives and injured countless others – but also would be an opportunity for us to dramatically surge assistance into Gaza. It has been diplomacy and humanitarian response working hand in hand that has allowed us to increase the amount of assistance that gets into Gaza. But we are – an increase in the number of points of entry, including Kerem Shalom and including some flour deliveries by port entry – but we know that the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza is nowhere near enough. And commercial access, and the restoration of the flow of commercial goods into Gaza is absolutely critical.
USAID has invested about $127 million in our partners who are on the ground. Partners like World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services, IMC. There's a field hospital that we support that is seeing 400 to 500 patients a day, which is very, very important. But again, the conditions speak for themselves. It's extremely important that civilian protection be improved. That access, and again, the amount of supplies that go in get approved – and it is also critically important that donors step up their assistance, because even if we could create a full flowing commercial and humanitarian pipeline, the resources that these organizations have on the ground to do this vital work are running out. And would just make a plug here for the supplemental, the bipartisan supplemental package that was released in the last couple of days – that would provide $1.4 billion to expand the U.S. response to humanitarian needs in Gaza. And obviously it’s not a perfect package for anyone involved in negotiating – it was a compromise – but it is vital for U.S. interests, both in Gaza and of course, in Ukraine, in Africa and beyond.
MR. WEISENFELD: Thank you so much. I know, it's a very difficult situation, we really appreciate your leadership on this. But, you know, as we've discussed before, USAID has to respond to immediate challenges, but also plan for the long term. And I know you've been a real leader in helping think through how the agency improves itself and its internal processes to do that. You've worked on issues like localizing aid, catalyzing new partnerships in the private sector, reducing burdens internally. And I know, we're all seized with how we institutionalize these changes. And that's one of the topics that ACVFA has been engaged on through the working groups, thinking about recommendations on institutionalizing these important changes. About a year ago, you launched the Progress Beyond Programs Policy Framework, and there's an aspect of that about the private sector that I don't think it's gotten that much attention. I think it'd be really interesting to hear your thoughts about USAID efforts to engage the private sector and development work within that concept and Progress Beyond Programs.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, we have an extraordinary private sector team – that well predated me and this administration – at USAID led by Michael Metzler. And USAID, as you know, Paul even from your time, has built over the years public-private partnerships. What we have now for the first time is a discrete – depending on how you see it either large or modestly scaled, I think it should be just the beginning and should be expanded further – but public-private partnership fund, that is called the EDGE Fund and it was named, basically, in the spirit of, instead of companies thinking philanthropically or merely about being good citizens in the world, to have them think about what are their comparative business advantages? What is the edge that a private sector partnership or a business can provide? And so, this is now a $100 million fund. What's been wonderful about it is it has unleashed our missions around the world – we have missions in 81 [82] countries, programs in more than 100 countries to look left, look right, and see, with a little catalytic money, with a little derisking, with training farmers to grow, or to package their goods in a different way – can we create more money, more development outcomes for our partners.
And I'll just give you one example, Paul, of the EDGE Fund, seeing it up close is so gratifying when we go around the world. But not long ago, I was in Ecuador and for years, USAID has been working, you know, with Ecuadorian small-scale farmers some living produce to produce, not able to hire or to have employees, often growing – let's say in the case of what I saw – green beans, but having to rely on middlemen to get those green beans to market, and often multiple middlemen. So by the time they actually saw a return on all that they, the toil of growing these green beans, really making almost no profit at all, and turning what they did make back into buying seeds and fertilizer and everything for the next year. So we launched, through the EDGE Fund, just again, investing a couple million dollars, we launched a partnership with Ecuador's largest supermarket chain called La Favorita. And here, what we said to La Favorita is – look, we know that these farmers right now on their own aren't producing in a manner where you could sort of take their goods and bring them right to market, but what if we fund the training of these farmers so that they are in a capacity to do that. That would then cut out the middlemen, they would then have more profit, they would be able to hire more people, they would then be able to expand the amount of land that they can grow the amount of goods that commodities that they can produce. And it worked. And La Favorita now is buying directly from these farmers that we met with and had increased the number of employees by tenfold, and we are taking this on the road.
Because, again, USAID’s objective is development, where is development critically needed? Of course, in and near the Amazon. Well, La Favorita is saying, well, but we can take our work with farmers closer to the capital. We don't have to go further afield. We said, well okay, what if we fund the training units out there? There are products being grown, crops being grown out there that are not grown elsewhere? What if we make it easier for you by funding these mobile centers? Then would you be up for that? Sure. And, once the farmers have the training and know how to cater directly to the supermarket, USAID’s involvement can recede, and we can move on, again to funding what is that thing that is required to get, to change the cost benefit fundamentally for a private sector investment.
And sometimes it's about doing a scoping mission, because they say, we don't – we're skeptical. And we think there's a development that, there's a for-profit benefit that can be accrued. So let us do the scoping mission, let us pay for that, and come back to you and show you that ecotourism can work in this part of the country. Let us again, do the training, let us do the loan guarantee or something that reduces the risk and increases the appeal. So that, I think, is a great example building on generations of work. USAID doesn't have a ton of unearmarked discretionary money of this nature. So we've kind of hive this off and are seeking to build broad support for this way of doing things. I think nobody disagrees that this is an important tool in the toolbox. But again, it doesn't have a protective constituency in the way that some of our other really important programs have. And so increasing awareness of the EDGE Fund, and what it does in the real world, is really important at a time when we know that the needs in the world are outstripping the resources that we are being provided. And, of course, that's more and more our day to day reality.
MR. WEISENFELD: Thank you, thank you for that. I love the idea of engaging the private sector in ways that focus on what's in their interest, rather than trying to convince them to fund what we want to do. And you've talked about that before. I also know that you mentioned the Loan Portfolio Guarantee Program, which I know USAID partners with the Development Finance Corporation on so that's also great. Another one of these internal reforms that you've been focused on is burden reduction that I know is a high point of focus for a lot of people who engage with USAID inside and out. So there's a lot of interest in this area. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've learned so far? I know, within a federal bureaucracy, it's not the easiest thing to do.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Yeah. So I will say in this federal bureaucracy, President Biden himself has sent a demand signal, and, around the importance of every agency taking on the task of reducing administrative reporting burdens, doing away with time taxes, both internally and in terms of external partners and customers – so called customers – so customer experience and customer service is a term you hear more and more. So we are not alone. And that helps, actually, because we're all reporting to OMB what results we're achieving. But we have basically, with the leadership of Paloma Adams-Allen here, our Deputy Administrator, issued a challenge to the workforce and kind of crowd sourced, what are the paperwork burdens, the time taxes that may have had a logic at some point – may never have had – but that needs to be rethought, and where we can achieve the same objective with much more streamlined processes.
So in foreign assistance, we know the approval process and getting money out the door is slower than we would like. We have made changes, I think, that are some of the first changes that have been made in a decade. You have to be a little bit in the weeds of the foreign assistance approval process for this to resonate, but removing 37 standard indicators and 23 key issues from our reporting processes, that it turned out when scrubbed weren't actually providing useful information, but we're causing people to have to scramble to come up with that information. Streamlining approval processes also when the real world demands it.
In Uganda, it's no secret that the Anti-Homosexuality Act has had catastrophic impacts on people who had been part of our PEPFAR program and now are living with fear of intimidation, and arrest, and violence, even greater fear than they have experienced in the past. And our Mission decided, okay, this is a great opportunity for burden reduction and we need to streamline application processes in light of this crisis, to make it easier for people to obtain access to grant resources from USAID. And this was foreign service nationals, our local staff, and partnering with our contracting officers, and finding a way to lower the barrier to entry so that we could meet the needs of people on the fly. We have cut four million hours of burdens, administrative burdens, so far through this effort. And a lot of the initial focus has been internal on how we can free up our incredible staff to be out in the world, talking with partners, pursuing new relationships with the private sector, with local actors. And so all of these are linked, because we need people out and about and not chained to their desks and simply tracking down information for some reporting requirement. But I do think in this next year, we're going to be increasing our effort to lower burdens, administrative burdens, for our partners out in the world. We've done some of that, but it is absolutely clear that we need to do more in order to make USAID easier to work with.
So we have our workwithusaid.org website. And, you know, that is meant to be again, a step toward customer service, but we need to hear from our partners, and have our partners in a way, go through the similar exercise that our staff is going through, which is understanding some of the requirements that USAID has to has to comply with from Congress or through our budget process or whatever. But, you know, if things feel duplicative, if they feel as if some original logic has given way to new exigencies, tell us. And help us figure out how we can lower the barriers to entry. And if we are successful in doing that, more successful than we have been so far and as we push that agenda, that's also going, again, to be super helpful for our effort to increase assistance and relationships with local partners. Because local partners definitely don't have the lawyers and the accountants and the staff and the over and the capacity to meet some of these really steep, kind of, barriers to entry or to transcend them.
MR. WEISENFELD: Thank you. I know, many people applaud that effort on burden reduction. Because whether you're in the agency or engaging with the agency from the outside, if we can reduce burdens, it allows people to spend more time focused on development, thinking about development rather than paper. So that’s the ultimate point. I know you have an important engagement to go to, so I'm hoping I could ask you one more question. We've talked about long term efforts, kind of the internal reform efforts, we've talked about humanitarian crisis. But USAID traditional development portfolio of economic growth, food security, climate, global health, are things we haven't touched on. I know that there's a lot in that area. But is there another area aside from those traditional big ones that you're particularly excited about that's coming up as a new point of focus?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you for asking, Paul. Yes, I am super excited about something that we launched as an initiative at Davos. And first, I'm going to tell you about it without telling you what it is so I build up the suspense and get you very excited about it as well. There is something out there that is claiming 1.6 million lives every year – that is more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. And the world, collectively, despite that an incredibly high death toll and very, very significant impacts in terms of education and learning for kids, kind of disparate impact of this issue on kids. Despite that, collectively, we the world are investing only $15 million in combating something that is taking 1.6 million lives a year. And we can make a major dent in this issue for $30 million. And so I'll describe the dents in a second. First, I'll tell you what the issue is. Something that we have made significant strides on here in this country over the decades and that is – lead poisoning.
And of course, we know about Flint, Michigan. And we know that that the code hasn't been fully cracked here on lead poisoning, which is why President Biden is making historic investment in getting rid of lead pipes once and for all in this country. But aspects of the lead problem that were issues here and in the Global North or in developed economies more generally, through regulation have been largely eradicated. So huge progress has been made in developed countries, but as often happens, when developed economies address an issue, resolve an issue, or at least mitigated vary substantially, there isn't then that next step – which is how do we take everything we've learned, and make sure that developing economies have access to the same toolkit, and really press on this.
And so USAID has missions, as you know Paul, in 81 [82] countries and in around, I think, 51 of them, lead has not even been banned in paints, for example. The substitutes are out there, they're not more expensive, it's a one to one substitute. You can get the pop and the pigment that you're looking for in paint. Same with spices – people like to, interestingly and surprisingly, there's lead in spices, and cosmetics, and consumer goods. So we have launched an initiative investing in an initial $4 million, knowing, again, it won't take much to get up to that $30 million. With $30 million, we can get rid of lead in spices and paint around the world.
And this is a very manageable problem. I think, as our discussion sort of speaks to, people are a little demoralized right now. It feels like all the world's problems are bigger than we can solve. It feels like they're all linked, as soon as you make progress on this issue, it's set back by a climate emergency, or debt distress for a country doesn't have any room themselves to invest, or an election goes forward, but maybe the election is stolen, or maybe the election is postponed, it's feeling hard to crack the code.
This is an addressable problem and aspects of this can be solved with learning outcomes, dramatically enhanced, and lives saved in a very, very short period of time. This is a classic Progress Beyond Programs, because we're so earmarked, we don't have a lot of discretionary health funding to immediately be able to go out the gate and solve this problem on our own. So we're going to foundations to other donors, to high net worth individuals, and we're going to build a coalition.
And I really do think in rapid fashion, we're going to be able to get rid of lead in spices and in paint, or support countries who get rid of it, starting with measurement, and then regulating it, and then dealing with customs and other testing so as to make sure that nothing seeps in. And then once we have achieved that, hopefully, we'll have a snowball of momentum to be able to address batteries, manufacturing, and other sources of lead. But this is the rare development area where there's a lot of low hanging fruit. And so I really hope others can join us. Thank you.
MR. WEISENFELD: Thank you for that. I'd love to tell you a two minute story to harden you on lead. It goes back to one of my colleagues at RTI, a woman named Jenny Redmond, who's an environmental scientist. She describes herself as a concerned mom. After Flint, Michigan, she went to her childhood care center, where her kids were, and she asked if they tested the water. And they didn't. So she developed a program to test water and to mitigate lead at that point. And she's turned that into a large program and is now tested in every licensed childcare facility in the state of North Carolina. She's rolled it out to Georgia, she's doing work in Vietnam and Guatemala as well. People often think at the pipe level, it's too expensive. But there are solutions, as you said, there are ways to address this.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: That's wonderful. Well, we need more of that and take it on the road.
MR. WEISENFELD: Thank you so much for your time. And I know, you have another engagement you have to go to, I don't know if you have any final words, but we're going to shift to the panel discussion, if you'd like to.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you. Well, no, just to say thank you. I do have to run off. But I will be watching as much of the live stream as I can because I learned so much from our colleagues on the board. And I'm so grateful to all of you for your support for USAID. This is the last year of the first term of the Biden administration, and we are very focused on institutionalizing a lot of what we've described here. But we can't do without you and without also for those of you who aren't in government, your best ideas for how we take this agenda forward. Thank you so much.
MR. WEISENFELD: Thank you so much, Administrator.