Why We Couldn’t Sell America on U.S.A.I.D.: William Herkewitz / NYTimes

Shared by Tom McDermott

This article by the former USAID communications lead raises a question - how well has any agency for international humanitarian or development aid done in 'selling' the public in donor countries on the importance of the work it does? 

 How easy is it for governments to snuff them out while their public barely notices or cares?

Click here for the article

Summary
In a personal and urgent opinion piece, former U.S.A.I.D. communications lead William Herkewitz condemns the impending dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by the Trump administration. He argues that the agency’s quiet success in preventing millions of deaths worldwide — especially during the Horn of Africa drought — went unnoticed by the American public due to the agency’s failure to tell its story at home. Herkewitz traces this communications failure to a strategy focused narrowly on congressional stakeholders, rather than public education and support. The result, he warns, is public indifference and political ease in terminating a vital humanitarian institution. He calls the moment a national moral failure, one in which “the people who know exactly what we’re losing are the ones letting it happen.”

Quotes

• “On July 1, the Trump administration will effectively dissolve the United States Agency for International Development and shunt the agency’s few remaining contracts to the State Department.”

• “During the drought, more than 40 million people were helped by humanitarian aid, of which over 70 percent was paid for by the United States.”

• “Without American aid, between 2.1 million and 3.9 million more excess deaths would have occurred.”

• “It cost the average American household roughly $6 a year in taxes to prevent about half as many deaths as occurred in the Holocaust.”

• “The people who know exactly what we’re losing are the ones letting it happen.”

• “If we ever return to serious global aid, we cannot rebuild on the same broken foundation that treated public awareness as optional.”