Growing up in New England, the highlight of spring was always the Boston Marathon. Whether we cheered the runners on from alongside the road or if we watched the event live on television, the experience always had a distinct allure. Bonded together with a singular purpose, beating their feet along the pavement with a steady [...]
Tag archives for 50th Anniversary
Global Health Series: Interview with USAID’s Susan Brems
In celebration of our 50th anniversary, a number of senior USAID personnel were recently interviewed by PSI for their magazine Impact. We’ll be bringing you portions of these interviews over the next few weeks as a part of our 50th Anniversary blog series. This week’s installment is an interview with Susan Brems, USAID’s Senior Deputy [...]
Coming Full Circle: My Experience with USAID
By: Anne Ralte, USAID Senior Advisor I was born in Mizoram (“land of the Mizo people”), a remote, mountainous part of north-eastern India, with our own language and culture. During my early childhood in the 1950’s, we were a marginalized tribal group with most families, like mine, making a living by farming. We lived in [...]
A History of Health Aid
In the 1970′s, there was an international effort that sought to provide relief and development assistance to the victims of the savage drought that has brought distress to the Sub-Sahara countries of Africa. The United States, through USAID participated in a Recovery and Rehabilitation program aimed at providing the basis for social and economic development [...]
USAID@50 – International Women’s Day
By: Abby Sugrue and Laura Rodriguez, USAID We were rummaging through historic USAID materials in the basement of the Ronald Reagan Building and found this photo of a young nurse and a baby. We couldn’t find a project name, date, title, or country – just “USAID” scrawled in pencil on the back. Still, the image [...]
Helping the First Elections to Succeed
by Diman Simanjuntak Today I work at USAID/Indonesia as a development specialist in the Office of Democratic Governance. But during the popular uprising that led to the downfall of Suharto and the return of democratic government to Indonesia I was a student activist. After the popular, student led uprising in Indonesia – similar to what [...]
USAID@50: Stories from the field
Tiana Razafimahatratra, a Foreign Service National working at USAID’s Madagascar misson, tells the story of her first days working with USAID. When I told my former colleagues from CARE that I had been recruited by USAID to join the mission in Madagascar as a Foreign Service National (FSN), their first reaction surprised me. It was [...]
My Journey with USAID
By Winston J. Allen, PhD Senior Evaluation Specialist, USAID Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning USAID entered my life in 1963, when I participated in the school lunch program at my elementary school, the Congo Town Municipal Primary School in the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone. The school lunch, supported by USAID, was a high [...]
Week 11: Working in Development
Submitted by Kimberly Ocheltree, Community Health Educator in Peace Corps Cameroon. Before joining the Peace Corps, Ms. Ocheltree worked as a Policy Fellow in USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health. I used to work at USAID and answer mission’s questions surrounding 13 various policies and statutes related to family planning assistance. My life has [...]
