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White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships Conference Call Minutes September 22, 2009, 1 PM - 2 PM
Speakers:
Mauricio Vera, Acting Director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at USAID
Joshua DuBois, Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Mauricio Vera
Welcome and thank you for joining the call today. We are excited to have Joshua DuBois as our special guest today on this call.
Joshua DuBois is the Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. One of President Obama's longest serving aides, he previously served as the Director of Religious Affairs for the Obama for America campaign, as well as the Presidential Inauguration Committee. Prior to his involvement with the Obama campaign, Joshua was a legislative aide to then-Senator Obama. He also spent time working for Representatives Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Charles Rangel (D-NY). Joshua was also an Associate Pastor at a small, Pentecostal church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and a Bachelor's degree from Boston University.
And now it is my privilege to turn the call over to Joshua DuBois:
Joshua DuBois
Thank you, Mauricio. Thank you to everyone who has joined the call. Thank you for the great work you are doing around the world to serve communities and people in need.
Thank you to Mauricio Vera and Heather MacLean for their work at the Center.
The President is committed to working with NGOs in the United States and across the globe to strengthen communities. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (FBNP) is helping to lead this effort. President Obama has renamed the office and shifted its focus in some ways.
We are facing serious challenges across the globe - disease, the economy, children not receiving the education they need. President Obama has recognized that we can't solve these problems in Washington alone. To do this we need to connect with the real change agents - the community groups, the faith-based groups and others who are on the ground working with people in need.
The goal of the White House Office is to connect these groups and the government so that they can together better serve communities and people in need. As part of this effort, there are 12 faith-based and neighborhood partnership centers in Federal Government agencies like the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Justice who work with organizations doing job training programs or running anti-gang initiatives, respectively. These centers work to strengthen the capacity of nonprofits and share information. With USAID, this work centers around international development. This all works to advance the President's priority to serve those in need.
The White House Office works to coordinate the work of the Agency offices. But it has also been tasked by the President with four special priorities.
Engaging faith-based groups and other non-profits as a part of the economic recovery. We are working to encourage state and local governments to work closely with these groups.
Encouraging responsible fatherhood and healthy families. This emphasis is shaped by in part by the President's experience of growing up without a father but also in his experiences in Chicago and seeing the challenge of father absence there. The President has kicked off a national conversation on fatherhood at the White House. It is continuing with regional community discussions.
Building common ground on abortion. This is a politically sensitive issue, and our goal is not to change fundamental principles on either side. But we can find areas of common purpose. The White House Office is working with the White House Council on Women and Girls to do this. Some of this common ground includes support for adoption, providing care for pregnant women, and reducing unintended pregnancies.
Encourage interfaith dialogue and cooperation. This priority is tied to the work of USAID. We need to understand how religion interacts with our diplomacy, development and defense. We need to connect religious leaders and organizations to government. We need to bring them together to talk and to address challenges. The White House Office had a role in the President's address is Cairo and is now working with the State Department, USAID, the National Security Council and other entities to follow-up on the key components of that speech. We're also working closely with the Corporation for National and Community Service to encourage interfaith service projects. The U.S. Government needs to better understand how religion impacts global affairs, and the White House Office is here to help work towards filling in some gaps in that understanding.
In another shift, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has an added focus on outreach. As part of that, the President set up an Advisory Council with 25 members and well as additional taskforce members to serve on the six taskforces set up by the Council. The Advisory Council will be issuing a report in February making recommendations on how the U.S. Government can form better partnerships with faith-based and other nonprofit groups.
One of the Advisory Council's taskforces is focused on Global Poverty and Development. The recommendations that they are drafting relate to capacity building; outreach to civil society; and making sure that NGOs are tightly woven into program planning and work. Again, this report will be coming out in February with these recommendations.
I look forward to hearing your questions and learning of your work.
Mauricio Vera
Thank you, Joshua. We greatly appreciate the work of Joshua and the White House Office. And now we will open it up for questions.
Q&A
Can you explain more about the coordinating role of the WH office? How does that work? Do you work with them to set priorities and budgets?
This setup is unique. We do work with the agency offices to set priorities. We interact with them on a daily basis, helping them to manage and move their work forward. But the Agency directors have dual reporting in that they also report to the head of their agency and his/her priorities. The agency centers balance that relationship well.
I commend your collaboration. I am with an organization working to combat child trafficking in Benin and West Africa. We are hosting an event on Capitol Hill tomorrow.
We appreciate your work on this important issue. You can always reach out to the White House Office with invitations by sending them to WHpartnerships@who.eop.gov.
I work with universities in the U.S. and would like to help them develop partnerships. We do participatory research in India, Africa, China, and here in Los Angeles. Will the President support community-partnered participatory research at NIH?
This is not an area with which I am very familiar. Please email your question to the White House Office at WHpartnerships@who.eop.gov and we will send it on to HHS for an answer.
I support a unified currency to promote development and peace in the Middle East. Can your office help facilitate examination of this proposal?
I cannot speak on behalf of the National Security Council or the U.S. State Department. Please send the proposal to WHpartnerships@who.eop.gov and I am happy to forward it on.
I represent a network of Christian organizations working in health care overseas. Some of our member organizations hire staff irrespective of religion. Other of our members hire staff that share their particular faith. Can you give us an update on what has happened with this policy under President Obama and share your perspective on what is to come?
This is a challenging legal issue. The President has said that he wants to fully understand the legal and policy intricacies of this issue before making decisions. In the case of co-religious hiring and other issues, he wants to fully examine the issues on a case-by-case basis before moving forward. As these cases arise and are referred by senior agency staff, I will work with the White House Counsel's office and the Department of Justice to develop recommendations to present to the President for his review. There has been no significant policy change on this issue since the beginning of the Administration.
What is the extent to which religious leaders can be engaged in programming? Is the USG engaging madrassahs overseas?
I'll defer to USAID on that.
My organization works in conflict resolution. Do any of the Agency centers train diplomats or foreign service officers on the role of religion?
We have no faith-based and neighborhood partnerships center at the U.S. State Department. The WH is working closely with the State Department, including offices such as the Global Partnerships Initiative, on this matter. We are looking at our current training at the Foreign Service Institute to make sure an understanding of religion is taught to our foreign service officers. At the direction of the President, the White House Office will participate in this work.
Are there plans to offer capacity building and program development training to help organizations partner with government in meeting the priorities?
USAID has provided some capacity building training and has info and links to capacity building organizations on their website.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be doing some capacity building through the Strengthening Communities Fund. This Fund is meant to build the capacity of local nonprofits. If you go to the HHS website and search for Partnership Center, you will find the info.
Mauricio Vera
USAID is planning to do capacity building training through our missions on how organizations can partner with USAID. Look for detailed information to come out in our biweekly newsletters.
We surveyed our organization of Christian international health care providers on family planning. We found that there was a lot of concurrence on family planning. There is a lot of unmet need. This unmet need is the root cause of induced abortion. We are finding common ground with international groups. How can we better work with the US communities on this issue?
Joshua DuBois
I'd like to receive more information on this work. For right now, the President is focusing on this policy goal in the domestic setting. We are working on it with the White House Council on Women and Girls. We would love to receive your thoughts on how your international work could apply to our work here.
Thank you for the call. This is a wonderful opportunity to dialogue. We are a technology team working with faith-based organizations and care providers to work together for greater outcomes. How do we communicate our work?
We should be using media to communicate. The President wants the White House Office to highlight models. We will be highlighting domestic models through a variety of mechanism: the web, conference calls, regional meetings, etc. Please send us your best examples and we will explore them for areas of potential partnership.
Mauricio Vera
Thank you, Joshua for your time. We know you have a busy schedule and really appreciate your time.
Joshua DuBois
Thank you for your work. Thank you to the partners for the work you do around the world to strengthen communities and help families. I want to commend you on behalf of the President.
Mauricio Vera
As we close, I want to encourage you to send any questions you did not get answered to the CFBCI at fbci@usaid.gov. The notes from this call will be place on the website in the coming weeks. Lastly, the next conference call will be in mid-October on registering with USAID as a Private Voluntary Organization.
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