Insights
From Acting
Administrator
Alonzo Fulgham
FrontLines - June 2009
Last month, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to address the
fifth group of new officers to join USAID through the Development
Leadership Initiative (DLI).
Under the DLI, a total of 196 new Foreign Service Officers have
entered the Agency over the past 11 months, which represents the
largest intake of new officers in 20 years.
I would like to share with the Agency a few facts about the fifth
class. Of the 40 new officers:
- 13 have experience in the developing world as Peace Corps
volunteers;
- 15 have worked with other U.S. government agencies;
- Four have prior experience with USAID;
- Two have served our country in the armed forces; and
- One is a Fulbright Scholar.
As a group, this new class of Foreign Service Officers speaks a
total of 33 different languages.
During their graduation ceremony, I shared a few thoughts with the
new officers about where we are going with foreign assistance, some
of which I’d like to pass on here: I firmly believe that, in the future, as
international affairs scholars and others look back on this time, it will
be recorded as something of a paradigm shift in foreign assistance.
At a time in which the community of nations is undergoing
some of the most severe economic and security challenges ever, the
United States has stood firm in its commitment to increase foreign
assistance to developing nations.
We have been asked by our president and secretary of state to
actively engage in new ways with our development and country
partners—and with a much wider range of stakeholders—in order to
find creative solutions to old problems.
We have begun to operationalize a new business model in fragile
states—one in which civilian leadership is working hand-in-hand
with our Defense colleagues to bring peace, security, and sustainable
development to areas with some of the most extreme conditions
ever seen.
Along with our development partners, most developing nations,
and organizations from across civil society, we have committed to a
new set of agreements that stress mutual accountability, results, and
country ownership of the development process, along with better
alignment and harmonization.
And we are now using technology to address the needs of
vulnerable populations in ways never imagined.
In this new arrangement, development is no longer the shortest
leg of the three-legged foreign policy stool. We are much more
evenly balanced alongside defense and diplomacy.
However, to take advantage of these new conditions, we will
need to make some adjustments in the institutional culture of our
Agency. We have always done our best work when we have been
forced to innovate, to think creatively, to experiment. Many of the
development tools and technologies still in use around the world
were the product of such creativity.
The strength of our organization lies with its people—the fine
women and men of our Foreign Service, Civil Service, Foreign
Service National Corps, and our personal service contractors. As I
travel to our missions abroad and interact with our people here in
Washington, I see great promise for the future of our Agency.
★
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