UNITED STATES: USAID bringing development techniques home

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan 22 1995 (IPS) - As it fights for survival against a budget-cutting Republican Congress, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is pointing to a new programme which should hold some appeal for even the most determined foreign aid foes.

“Lessons without Borders” is a new initiative designed to bring home to poor communities in the United States some of what Washington’s foreign development aid agency has learned in the Third World.

Developing countries have a great deal to teach social policy-makers in the United States about such key development issues as child immunisation and micro-enterprises, according to Jill Buckley, USAID’s chief of Legislative and Public Affairs.

With the help city governments, local community groups, and non- governmental organisations (NGOs), such as Accion International, USAID is actively spreading its ideas and expertise about implementing anti-poverty programmes in poor communities throughout the United States.

“We have lots of of people who say, ‘Come to our city’,” Buckley told a workshop here this week at the International Development Conference (IDC) which this year is devoted to the theme of ‘Achieving Global Human Security’.

No city has been more receptive to the Lessons programme than Baltimore, an industrial port of more than 700,000 people just 60 kms north of Washington.

With an illiteracy rate as high as 14 percent and 45 percent unemployment rates in some neighbourhoods, Baltimore faces “the same problems and challenges as in the developing world,” according to Lee Tawney, a top aide to Mayor Kurt Schmoke.

Only about 55 percent of the city’s children under two years old have received recommended immunisations, while infant mortality in some neighbourhoods — 19 per 1000 live births — is worse than many developing nations.

Early in the administration of President Bill Clinton, Schmoke invited USAID to share its expertise with the city. They decided to concentrate their efforts on improving the health of poor people in Baltimore and on fostering micro-enterprise programmes.

That partnership is going strong. Last November, Baltimore sent a seven community activists to Kenya where they toured USAID- funded projects.

Michael Gaines, director of Baltimore’s Council for Economic and Business Opportunity was especially impressed with the peer lending programmes he saw in Kenya. He suggests they could even help Republican lawmakers think about welfare reform in new ways.