|
Women & International Aid |
|
What is it, why it matters for women and girls, and why we need to do it now.
Foreign Assistance and Women | What's Wrong with Foreign Assistance | Why Now? | The Solution | Resources
 | Investing in women and girls is one of the most efficient use of our foreign assistance dollars and best ways to make the world more peaceful and prosperous. Decades of research and experience prove that women are more likely to invest their income in food, clean water, education, and health care for their children, creating a positive cycle of change that lifts entire families, communities and nations out of poverty. Simply put, when women thrive, we all do.
| 
Photo Credit: Women Thrive Worldwide | Over a billion people worldwide live on a dollar a day or less - and women are most likely to be among them. This is a problem that affects all of humanity - when women are poor, entire communities suffer because they are not free to earn an income, feed their families, or protect themselves and their children from violence.
| The above chart gives a glimpse of the competing priorities and overlapping bureaucracies in our Foreign Assistance system. Lack of coordination represents more than just inefficiency: it is a wasted opportunity to save lives. Click here to see the full chart. Source: Lael Brainard, Security by Other Means (Brookings, 2006) | What's Wrong
U.S. International Assistance has the potential to be a major force for good - in fact, when done right it has eradicated entire diseases and sent countless girls to school. The problem? Our foreign assistance system is designed in a way that prevents us from reaching these achievable goals. This is bad news for women struggling to escape poverty: they cannot benefit from resources that would dramatically change their families' lives.
The result? Our money is not being used efficiently and we are missing out on the biggest opportunity we have to improve the world and restore America's image in it.
Why We Need to Act Now
The last decade has seen a sharp decline in U.S. standing in the world. It is imperative that a new President takes action now to restore our reputation around the world.
|
| Right now there is a political 'perfect storm' to accomplish this. There is growing political will in Congress to rethink our foreign assistance, and strong support from international aid groups that work in poor communities worldwide. Our current system was created in the 1960s, and does not reflect the needs of today’s world - but right now we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to modernize it. The new President will have a unique opportunity to do what has not been done in over 40 years: transform our assistance programs to meet current realities and to be a powerful force for good.
Women Thrive Worldwide is joining forces with the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), a reform coalition of international development and foreign policy
| 
Photo Credit: Steve Evans
| practitioners, advocates, experts, concerned citizens, and private sector organizations to invest in the safety and prosperity of future generations by enhancing the U.S. government’s ability to alleviate poverty, create opportunity, and encourage stability in the developing world.
The Solution: Reforming Foreign Aid
The lives and futures of over 1 billion people are too important to ignore. We need to maximize our foreign aid dollars and create a system that works. We can get it right, but to do that we need to:
- Elevate global development as a national interest priority in actions as well as in rhetoric;
- Align foreign assistance policies, operations, budgets and statutory authorities;
- Rebuild and rationalize organizational structures;
- Commit sufficient and flexible resources with accountability for results; and,
- Partner with others to produce results.
|
We Call on the New President and Congress To:
- Develop a national strategy for global development;
- Reach a “grand bargain” with each other on management authorities and planning, designing and enacting a new Foreign Assistance Act;
- Streamline the organizational structure and improving organizational capacity by creating a Cabinet-level Department for Global Development, by rebuilding human resource capacity and by strengthening monitoring and evaluation; and,
- Increase funding for and accountability of foreign assistance.
Resources:
| Activist Tools:
|
|
