It has been nearly sixteen years since my father died. He spent his career working in public service for USAID and the US foreign aid agencies that preceded it. His values were inspired by the New Deal. Coming out of college at the tail end of the Depression, he went to work for the Farm Security Administration in Oklahoma. When World War II came he joined the Office of War Information (intelligence). After the war the State Department sent him to help rebuild a Korea devastated by war and years of Japanese occupation.

In 1957 Dad was sent with his family to Ethiopia where he worked for Point Four, the US foreign aid program which was envisioned by President Truman in the fourth point of his inaugural address in 1949. In Ethiopia, Point Four built roads, dams, technical and agriculture schools and (as this coffee drinker now appreciates) assisted coffee farms. For my father it was rewarding work in an exciting time. For my mother, my three brothers and myself it was a two year long adventure.

With John Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, Point Four became the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It was intended to extend the Marshall Plan’s success in rebuilding postwar Europe to “developing nations”. It was also a strategy to counter the influence of the USSR in the “third world” with American “soft power”. My father worked in four countries in Africa during his career. Greatly to his credit, he declined to be assigned to Vietnam, where the USAID had become closely linked with the disastrous war there.

Over nearly 80 years, USAID and its predecessors led the US response to famines and epidemics, and treated chronic diseases such as polio, smallpox, malaria, HIV and COVID all over the world. It built schools and clinics, cleared mines and replanted forests. It provides much of the funding to NGOs, such as CARE, Catholic Relief Services and Partners in Health. I saw this in the late 1970s when I worked for a year as a volunteer for Catholic Relief Services in Lesotho. Much of the funding for my village water supply and erosion control projects came from USAID.

Not every project was successful, or every dollar well-spent. Over the years our foreign aid program has been attacked on both sides - by the right as “giveaways to ungrateful foreigners” and by the left as too closely aligned to US policies with which they disagree (eg., Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan). But at its best it has been a positive face of US foreign policy, which has sought to feed, heal and rebuild in foreign lands. Among its strongest support has come from farm states, whose surplus corn and soybeans are bought and distributed by USAID. Up till now it has been supported and authorized by Congress year after year.

The world still suffers from poverty and hunger and disease, and doubtless will forever. But millions of children have survived famine and malaria and HIV, gone to school, and lived to be productive adults because of its work. My dad's efforts were not wasted.

Just days into a new administration, an unelected billionaire, who knows nothing of international health care, agriculture or development, has been allowed to shut the entire agency down with the determination that it is “time for it to die”. Thousands of career civil servants have been fired. Vital programs have been shut down all over the world. Many people will die because of this unconstitutional and unfathomably cruel act.


I am aware that this is only one of many dire issues right now (I could go on). Please use your voice.
Tony