Washington, D.C.
LISE GRANDE: Madam Administrator, thank you for being at USIP, for your leadership on the strategy, and for presenting it with such intent and interest. We'd like to begin our fireside chat with a very practical question, if you allow. As the head of USAID, what kind of tangible changes do you hope that this policy, with its emphasis on religious engagement, will have on how USAID does its work?
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much, and thanks again to all of you. I think as a practical matter I alluded just now to some of the trepidation and sensitivity. And so part of what we have done is launched new training. Just in February of this year, we launched a training for our workforce on strategic religious engagement. We had – that comes, also, on training that exists on international religious freedom and on the Establishment Clause, around which people still have just a lot of questions. We say in the policy, if you have questions, don't then say, "Okay, let me go run off and find another partner where it might be less complicated or where I don't have to talk to a lawyer." Which – you know that many people just don't want to talk to a lawyer. But instead just call the general counsel, call your legal advisor at your mission and the wide array of partnerships that are possible.
A lot of people, even to this day, don't understand that, yes, we can't fund proselytizing. We can't fund religious instruction. But my goodness, in terms of service provision, in terms of the bully pulpit, the moral pulpit that leaders have, in terms of peacebuilding, environmental protection, public health. So, you know, the policy itself, the strategy itself, I should say – at USAID there's an important distinction between strategies and policies. The strategy is itself a message, a signal to go looking. To know that when we talk about inclusive development, of course that means going out of our way to find marginalized populations, vulnerable populations, but it also means being really inclusive in how we think about partnership.
And it means, you know, whatever those trust issues – which I should say, go in both directions – I think many potential partners out there who are faith-based organizations or faith leaders think to themselves, "Do I have to hide my faith in order to come forward and apply for USAID resources?" So, the fact of having a strategy sends an important sort of high level signal. Training our workforce, encouraging them to come forward and be themselves more intentional, in line with the principles here, that will make a difference. But we're doing it, but we can be doing it in much more substantial ways. And my broader kind of message, our mantra at USAID is also progress beyond programs. So there's the question of, actually, how we partner and provide resources, taxpayer resources, to organizations that can provide services, that can do advocacy, that can help tackle a public health crisis or deal with climate adaptation. There's that aspect of it, but it's also getting our teams to see that they can do development diplomacy even if they don't have a budget for it.
If you are trying to get people to take a COVID vaccine, you may not, in that particular community, have resources to fund a pop-up clinic, but you can engage a faith leader for free. And it turns out if you can actually enlist a faith leader doing development diplomacy, that may have every bit as important an impact in terms of steering a congregant to go someplace else to get a vaccine, or even to adhere to basic sanitation practices than if you had some large program budget.
So, you know, I think we'll see this. There'll be implementation – an implementation plan will follow the strategy with a kind of tool kit for our team members. But we really need to get the word out to the faith community, as well, that USAID, which has always been open for business but now is being more intentional, even more intentional in this direction.
MS. GRANDE: Madam Administrator, how do you see the relationship between the new Strategic Religious Engagement Policy and some of your Agency's broader priorities? You spoke about the transformative impact that you expect to see from this new policy. How do you think that will affect the other things you're trying to do? And we're very specifically talking about some of the hallmarks of your leadership in USAID's engagement, which would include localization, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, and inclusive development.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Yeah. Thank you for highlighting several aspects of what we are trying to push forward at USAID. So, let me – first, I'll start just by coming back to this idea of progress beyond programs. So in general, we're trying to develop a mindset, or deepen a mindset, that has us not simply saying, "What has Congress done for us lately? What kind of appropriation have we been given and how do we go forth on the basis of our earmarks and directives in order to do good in the world and meet people where they are?" We're trying to shift it a little bit to say – because no budget could ever keep up with the, as you know from leading here, no budget can ever keep up with what's coming at us right now in terms of displacement, conflict, climates. Never mind, you know, coming out of a once-in-a-century pandemic.
So shifting the mindset to have our teams in the field say, "What is the problem that we're trying to solve? What is the problem that this community is most seized with?" And then say, "Do we have resources to apply to that?" If not, it's still their priority problem. We are still the world's leading governmental development humanitarian agency, and we know a lot of people. We know private sector leaders, we're the leading funder of the World Bank, we can hustle up other donors, even if we may not have an earmark that aligns entirely.
So I think this – and I gave the example earlier on vaccine diplomacy – but I think this intentionality around religious engagement fits really well under that as well, to engage religious leaders to find out what's on their mind, what are the biggest challenges, how do they prioritize? But also recognizing that even if we are not funding them, they have a role to play on team problem-solve, let's say, or team development. However, the challenge is defined.
So that's a major Agency priority in terms of bringing that mindset to bear wherever we are and not letting resources define our sense of the possible. Easier said than done, this is challenging. You get promoted at USAID for the amount of money you manage, and in many instances, there's so much work associated with managing the resources that are generously appropriated to us. So this is actually asking a lot, but it's been incredibly gratifying to see people seize this way of operating.
Second, you mentioned localization. We have set a target for USAID to provide 25 percent of our assistance directly to local partners. Faith-based organizations rooted in the communities with all of that history and that local knowledge would be wonderful candidates as our Missions look and go beyond traditional, let’s say a U.S.-based contracting partners are large international organizations like the one that you used to work for. So they are, I think, great candidates and should be engaged and enlisted – and we have great examples already, of course, of doing that. But, in order for that really to work in a sustainable way, our efforts to make it easier to work with USAID also have to bear fruit.
So, at the same time, we've set these targets and tried to create incentives within USAID for USAID personnel to work with smaller organizations, and local organizations who tend to be smaller. We also have, separately, an initiative around paperwork burdens, and barriers to entry, and all the administrative and compliance requirements that might make a faith-based organization really excited to tap into a pool of resources around community engagement on lowering emissions – they may be really "gung ho" to do that – and then they go on the website and then their heads explode and then they decide maybe they'll go somewhere else and hope to raise money. So, this is going to take time, it’s already taking time, but we did over the course of the last year, manage to increase the amount of U.S. assistance, USAID assistance that went to local organizations by 40 percent. It is a low bar in terms of that share. Getting to 25 percent by 2025 is going to be really challenging.
The other part of a localization agenda, though, should be squarely in the wheelhouse of strategic religious engagement, which is a target of ensuring that 50 percent of our assistance is obligated by virtue of co-design, co-evaluation, where, you know, we all talk about partnership. That is the language of development these days, as it should be. But where we are actually measuring the extent to which this is true partnership, or us coming along and kind of bringing a program idea, or a particular project to a community. So, we've just unveiled our metrics for local empowerment, which is different, again, than this direct assistance.
So, something could go through a U.S.-based organization, for example, International Rescue Committee or something – Samaritan's Purse, it could go through one of those organizations. But in order to "count" as part of the 50 percent, it has to be co-designed – the conception of what it is, the implementation, who's measuring, whether it's really what a community needs – that has to be done locally. And so that's to get to 50 percent of all U.S. assistance by 2030. And we're making progress there. Again, that to me, it should – that should be close to 100 percent, surely, but we will measure it and get there.
And again, that just stands out as being a natural place where our missions can go forth into mosques, into churches, engaging with synagogues, faith leaders, and have that conversation about what is needed and how best to channel resources. And then an RFP can grow out of that kind of dialogue in that conversation. But in at the take-off, in at the landing. And I think that'll be really important.
And then of course, inclusive development which you mentioned we want to be, and again, I don't want to spoil the acronym unveiling, but we want to be incredibly inclusive and respectful of the diversity that exists within all communities. The principles of nondiscrimination are going to be absolutely essential as we try to expand and deepen our partnerships. And, I think, again, knowing actually that so often it is faith-based organizations who are finding and ministering to the most vulnerable, and the most marginalized, makes this a really exciting vehicle for our broader inclusive development agenda. At the same time, again, whoever we partner with, we want to make sure that they're not discriminating on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth. So, I think inclusive development cuts, you know, in many, many directions, many important directions, as you'll hear about when you hear more about the policy.
MS. GRANDE: If you allow, Madam Administrator, a final question about dignity, which we understand is one of the core principles guiding this particular policy and strategy. In your career you've written very powerfully about human dignity as a historical force. May we invite you to talk about how you see the concept of dignity as it connects to both global development and USAID's engagement with religious actors?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Absolutely. I do think it's essential. It is the "d" in "bridges." Just so you know. Spoiler alert. But it's more than that. I mean, it is the animating principle behind development, behind humanitarian response. And, if you have a secular approach to dignity, it's as simple as each person has an inherent worth. Their agency matters to them, and thus matters to the rest of us. Their autonomy, respecting, again, that no matter where you come from, no matter what family you're born into, what religion you are, what sexual orientation you are, that that inherent worth is a universal principle. So, I think broadly speaking, is the animating principle behind why we help people try to gin-up jobs, or give them cash assistance in the wake of an emergency so they can go to the market and buy food for their families, themselves, or spare a parent by providing tangible food assistance. The indignity of not being able to feed a child and to have to look in a child's eyes. Dignity is everything to what we're trying to do at USAID.
And, if from a religious standpoint, if you believe, as I think all faiths do, that every individual is born in the image of God, that to me, is the embodiment of that same core principle of inherent worth. If you're born in the image of God, you're entitled to have your rights respected, to have your dignity promoted over the course of your lifetime. And part of dignity is also about, again, some of this localization can sound very jargony, but it's about dignity. It's about who's exercising voice around how to grow an economy, or expand educational access, or provide health care. So fundamentally, localization, to me, is rooted as well in attention to dignity.
You asked the question about dignity as a historical force. I think leaders who ignore – or who negate individual dignity, or a community's dignity by stripping a religious minority of its rights, or of its ability to practice its religion – I think Isaiah Berlin talked about the bent twig long ago of just how that kind of snaps forward when bent and suppressed. When one is forced to pay a bribe, and that leader asks for a bribe, and asks for a bribe, and you have no way to vote that leader out of office, even though what they are doing is a violation of your dignity, that of your family. You know, that suppressed over time is a very kinetic and powerful force.
I think that our engagement with religious communities needs to be alert to the complexity, and the sensitivity, and the diversity of not only faith, but of the practice of faith. And be extremely sensitive of the dignity of the individuals with whom we are engaging. But the enterprise of expanding engagement in these communities is all about trying to advance, promote, protect the dignity of individuals in the communities in which we work. And we think that this strategy is going to put us in a stronger position that we're going to – even just having a strategy. I mean, how can it be that this is the first strategy on religious engagement? I was very, very surprised. Even this morning I was like, "Are we sure it's the first really?"
And again, we've had a dedication to programming and partnering with faith-based partners for a very long time. But in signaling how much we value what faith-based organizations and faith leaders have to offer our broad strategic objectives in tackling the world's hardest problems, I hope that's an affirmation of the dignity of our faith-based partners in broad strokes. But I also hope it invites and excites a proliferation and broad expansion of the conception of what's possible between our agency and this community. Thank you.
MS. GRANDE: Madam Administrator. Thank you for your comments. I hope everyone joins me in expressing our appreciation.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you, Lise.