Last month, I met with communities in the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco that were hit hard by last year’s devastating earthquake — and I saw how local Moroccan organizations are stepping up to help the community recover and rebuild.
These local groups are drawing on their long-standing relationships within the community to identify and meet urgent needs — from restoring schools to offering psychosocial services for women and young people to providing health and nutrition support to families with children. And I saw how, in addition to providing emergency relief, these organizations are working to help women, young people, and individuals with disabilities start, or restart, their own businesses — so these individuals can move from requiring assistance to building sustainable livelihoods of their own.
As we work to advance dignity and opportunity around the world, we see again and again that local leadership is critical for transformative and sustained impact. Many of our own teams at the U.S. Agency for International Development have taken this learning to heart and made progress both in elevating local leadership over program design and implementation and channeling more resources to local organizations. USAID’s mission in Morocco, to give just one example, has more than doubled the percentage of funding going to local organizations — from 16% in 2021 to almost 40% in 2023 — and importantly, the team now brings in diverse local voices to shape all of their programming and policy engagements.
About the author
Samantha Power
Samantha Power is the 19th administrator of USAID, the world’s largest bilateral development agency, with a global staff of over 13,000 across more than 100 countries. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris administration, Power served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017 under President Obama. From 2009 to 2013, she served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to the president and senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights. Power began her career as a war correspondent in Bosnia, and went on to report from countries including Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.
