As community organizers, we’re happy to hear Samantha Power call USAID the U.S. “Agency for inclusive development,” and promise to support bottom-up, locally led development. Yet none of our organizations want to manage USAID-designed projects.
USAID’s top leader is challenging the paradigm of large projects managed by U.S. contractors. But in Haiti and El Salvador, where we lead and support grassroots organizations, we haven’t seen the U.S. Agency for International Development change its approach. And we’re skeptical the U.S. will be willing to follow the lead of local people who know best what their communities and countries need.
The fact that we don’t want to take on USAID-designed projects may explain why USAID has not known how to respond to us when we’ve tried to engage the agency in our work. Yet we want to engage because we want to shape the flow of U.S. aid into our countries, to magnify work we and others are doing to address the underlying conditions causing poverty and hold our governments accountable.
About the authors
Florcie Tyrell
Florcie Tyrell is director of the Peoples Organization for the Development of Northeast Haiti, a grassroots, faith-based movement of 22 community organizations across northeast and north Haiti.
Alberto Velazquez
Alberto Velazquez is Central America regional director of Communities of Faith Organizing for Action, which is powered by grassroots leadership teams in 160 local communities in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.
Gordon Whitman
Gordon Whitman is managing director for International Organizing at Faith in Action, which supports grassroots organizing and community-led development in the U.S. and a dozen countries in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe.
