Scott Gruber
The USAID Impact blog frequently features posts by guest authors.
USAID’s Stabilization in Key Areas (SIKA) program in Afghanistan has been in the news over the past few days, primarily due to the challenging nature of the SIKA’s goals. The program was not designed to handle easy issues. In fact, the program strives to strike at several difficult challenges that will influence Afghanistan’s future after the transition in 2014.
Today, Colombia celebrates a great milestone. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), out of 38 endemic countries worldwide, Colombia is the first to eliminate river blindness, a disease transmitted through infected flies that can cause chronic skin lesions, irreversible blindness, or severe visual impairment.
Last month, we were honored to have Greg Beck, deputy assistant administrator for Asia at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), visit the group to share details about USAID ‘s on-going disaster risk reduction (DRR), resilience, and climate adaptation related-engagement in the Asia Pacific and the related State-USAI Joint Regional Strategy for East Asia and the Pacific.
Bear Valley Ventures, a grantee of USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) program, is investigating how to radically improve hand hygiene habits in India, through product innovation. Bear Valley and partners created Clean Hands Inc (CHI) to develop new products for the urban poor that can be used by households with substandard or no sanitation and constrained access to water.