SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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30–145PDF
2006
THE ROLE OF FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS IN UNITED STATES PROGRAMMING IN AFRICA
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
SEPTEMBER 28, 2006
Serial No. 109–237
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey,
Vice Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
RON PAUL, Texas
DARRELL ISSA, California
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin
JERRY WELLER, Illinois
MIKE PENCE, Indiana
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THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
CONNIE MACK, Florida
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
MICHAEL McCAUL, Texas
TED POE, Texas
TOM LANTOS, California
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
BARBARA LEE, California
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
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GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM SMITH, Washington
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., Staff Director/General Counsel
ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California,
Vice Chairman
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
BARBARA LEE, California
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DIANE E. WATSON, California
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
MARY M. NOONAN, Subcommittee Staff Director
GREG SIMPKINS, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member
NOELLE LUSANE, Democratic Professional Staff Member
SHERI A. RICKERT, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member and Counsel
LINDSEY M. PLUMLEY, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
WITNESSES
Ms. Terri Hasdorff, Director, Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Office, United States Agency for International Development
Mr. Ken Hackett, President, Catholic Relief Services
The Reverend Edward Phillips, Chairperson, Eastern Deanery Community-Based Health Care & Aids Relief Program
Mr. Ken Isaacs, Vice President of Programs and Government Relations, Samaritan's Purse
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LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations: Prepared statement
Ms. Terri Hasdorff: Prepared statement
Mr. Ken Hackett: Prepared statement
The Reverend Edward Phillips: Prepared statement
Mr. Ken Isaacs: Prepared statement
THE ROLE OF FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS IN UNITED STATES PROGRAMMING IN AFRICA
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2006
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights
and International Operations,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:03 p.m. in room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Honorable Christopher H. Smith (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
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Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee will come to order. Good afternoon everyone. Following his inauguration as President in January 2001, George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13199, creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Soon after, a series of four more Executive Orders, created centers for faith-based and community initiatives at 10 cabinet departments and three agencies. One of those agencies was the U.S. Agency for International Development. In the April 2002 White House ceremony to promote what he called his faith-based initiatives, President Bush said that the Federal Government should not discriminate against faith in decisions on funding for programs to provide help to people in need. ''When we have Federal moneys, people should be allowed to access that money without having to lose their mission or change their mission,'' the President explained. ''Government can write checks but it can't put hope in people's hearts or a sense of purpose in people's lives.''
The President's defense of the role of faith-based organizations made some people uneasy about what they believed to be the principle of separation of church and state. Fears were expressed about government money building churches, and services provided only to those who participated in religious ceremonies. This fear has been stoked by concerns over the inclusion of a charitable choice program in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which allowed taxpayer-financed social service funding of churches in some welfare programs. However, those expressing such concerns ignored the long and very successful history of partnership between government and faith-based organizations, a history that did not include government sponsorship of religion or forced conversions. From the founding of the republic, government has worked with faith-based organizations to build and operate schools and provide other social services where government was less capable of doing so. After the civil war, the Freedoms Bureau, for example, established to provide services for the millions of newly emancipated African-Americans, went into partnership with faith-based organizations, such as the American Missionary Association, to build schools, supply food and deliver other vital services for people adapting to life after slavery.
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For more than 150 years the Young Men's Christian Association has offered health and fitness programs, shelter and child care and other programs to people of all creeds and races. Today the 2,617 YMCAs comprise the largest not-for-profit community service organization in America. Catholic Charities founded in 1910 has worked diligently to eliminate poverty, support families and empower communities across America and serve the needs of more than 7 million people each year.
Catholic Charities provides such services as food banks and soup kitchens, educational enrichment, counseling and mental health, temporary and permanent housing and many other community interventions. And I would note, parenthetically, that in my own home State of New Jersey, particularly the City of Trenton, the work of Catholic Charities is invaluable. Without them, many of the poor would go unnoticed, lacking many basic services.
Beginning in the 20th century, government engaged in partnerships with faith-based organizations on overseas programming to deliver famine and disaster relief, refugee aid and other assistance in other development programs. One such organization is Catholic Relief Services, one of our witnesses today, which has been providing services through government funding for more than 60 years.
Beginning in the 1950s World Vision, a Christian relief and development organization has concentrated on tackling the causes of poverty worldwide and provided food, education, health care and economic opportunities to people around the world. An estimated 87 percent of World Vision funding goes directly to programs and not overhead. Despite this record of success, without mixing government and religion and without widespread discrimination in services, critics continue to express doubts about the ability of faith-based organizations to provide services due to limitations based on the very faith they profess. These doubts are expressed most often in terms of services provided to victims of HIV/AIDS, and I believe wrongly so.
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The Government of Uganda, under the leadership of President Museveni, has pioneered the ABC model of dealing with AIDS. ABC stands, as we know, for Abstinence, especially for the youth, Be faithful for committed couples and Condoms where sexually active people are unable or unwilling to practice celibacy or fidelity. In the early 1990s, an estimated 30 percent of adult Ugandans were HIV-positive. Through the ABC program, the rate of HIV infection declined to 12 percent by 1999, and is estimated to be 5 percent today. This past January, my staff and I visited Uganda to see firsthand how effective the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and this program in particular have been. Among the many impressive programs that we visited was the Mbuya Reach Out, a faith-based organizations working under the auspices of Our Lady of Africa Church in Kampala. This program cares for over 1,800 HIV-positive clients and their families. Parent support is mainly provided by community volunteers, 70 percent of whom are HIV-infected themselves. The program has a multiplier effect in that those who are assisted in turn are assisting numerous other people. The program has multiple dimensions, including education, assistance for clients, children, a microfinance program for clients and skills training for unemployed HIV-infected women. Another effective program that we saw was the Uganda business coalition children AIDS fund initiative, the UBC. The UBC aims to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS among workers and in the workplace due to PEPFAR, the UBC business coverage scheme was expanded in 2004 to include the provision of free care and treatment to individuals, including individuals in the community, who could not afford to pay or who not otherwise have access to UBC services.
What we found in Uganda was a partnership not only between government and faith-based organizations but also a complementary system in which faith-based organizations concentrated on the behavior modifications elements of the AIDS control program in Uganda, the A and the B, while a secular organization handled the C by distributing condoms. This program works in Uganda because organizations are allowed to do what they do best and are not forced to betray their ideals or provide services in which they do not believe. Secular organizations that do not believe in the behavior modification elements of the ABC program and the like manner would be as reluctant to engage in them as faith-based organizations would be in delivering condoms. While the HIV/AIDS programs in Uganda managed by the PEPFAR program had a cooperative relationship with faith-based organizations, sadly, that was not and apparently is not the case with the Global Fund in Uganda and perhaps everywhere else.
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In Uganda, as well as other countries, the Global Fund somehow fails and fails miserably to fund faith-based organizations in proportion to the services they provide. In most African countries, faith-based organizations deliver the majority of health care services and, in some cases, more than 2/3 of health care services received, yet only 5 to 6 percent of the Global Fund support is given to faith-based organizations and that, my friends, has to change.
USAID Administrator Randall Tobias, formerly the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, has said, faith-based and community organizations have a reach, authority and legitimacy that make them critical partners in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Faith-based organizations also have another role to play, and an integral part—they are an integral part of civil society in African nations. I would just note parenthetically that not just on the HIV/AIDS issue but a host of other interventions. I remember a trip I offered the amendment that established the child survival fund back in the early 1980s, putting it at $50 million to treat preventable diseases to immunize children around the world.
If it had not been for the Catholic Church particularly in Latin America, El Salvador and in other countries, the massive vaccinations that occurred, mostly with United States money but mostly because of the work that was done by churches, those children would not have been vaccinated against ptosis, diphtheria, polio and a number of other diseases. I went down there myself in 1984, 1985, and 1986, and saw that the churches provided the network not only to inform and to empower the women to bring their children to those vaccination posts and to go back even when junior got a little fever from the original vaccinations, which often happens which is to be expected, but to keep it up so that other children as they are being born would go back and the church gave that sustainability aspect to it which I found very, very encouraging and not to include that infrastructure I think is wrong and unconscionable and that is unfortunately in some cases the case in Africa and especially with the Global Fund.
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Last year Gregory Simpkins of my staff visited Zimbabwe the midst of one of the cruelest campaigns against a population ever initiated by a government. In an operation whose name translates to ''take out the trash,'' the Government of Zimbabwe destroyed tens of thousands of homes and businesses in a relentless effort to eliminate the informal sector. When nearly 3/4 of a million people found themselves homeless and without a means of earning a living and nongovernmental organizations were prevented from providing assistance, Zimbabwean churches took the lead in helping the homeless.
In country after country in Africa, churches and mosques deliver services as part of their regular activities. When they and their affiliated organization receive government funds to help those in need, government is actually building on existing networks of service. The multiplier effect allows aid dollars to go much further than they might ordinarily do. Moreover as Ambassador Tobias said, faith-based organizations possess a reach and an authority and a legitimacy that makes them natural allies in any effort to provide help to those in need as a grassroots level. Far from being a western intrusion in African life, working with faith-based organizations in Africa is actually a means of connecting with African heritage. African nations have a long history of integrating religion and spiritual awareness and anyone who has spent time in Africa understands that faith is not considered outside the realm of public life there.
As long as faith-based organizations adhere to the rules concerning the separation of publicly funded activities and religious proselytizing and do not discriminate in the provision of their taxpayer-funded programming, the alliance of government and faith-based organizations should continue and as a matter of fact, it should expand to continue this successful tradition. Though we have little, if any, empirical evidence quantifying the success of this public-private partnership, its very longevity attests to its success. If you just talk to people who have been well served in any one of our districts, and if you go travelling around the country and talk to people who have been well served, it makes the case that they have been helped because of that partnership.
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Our hearing today is intended to examine whether the President's faith-based initiative is indeed opening public space for religious organizations or whether this initiative contains a hidden glass ceiling, as one of our witnesses today describes it. United States aid programs in Africa and elsewhere should be effective and compassionate. The partnership between government and faith-based organizations and government has historically achieved those goals and we need to build on it and to expand it. I yield to my good friend and colleague, Mr. Payne, for any opening comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS
Following his inauguration as President in January 2001, George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13199, creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Soon after, a series of four more executive orders created Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at 10 Cabinet departments and three agencies. One of those agencies was the U.S. Agency for International Development.
In an April 2002 White House ceremony to promote what he called his faith-based initiative, President Bush said that the federal government should not discriminate against faith in decisions on funding for programs to provide help to people in need.
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''When we have federal monies, people should be allowed to access that money without having to lose their mission or change their mission,'' the President explained. ''Government can write checks, but it can't put hope in people's hearts, or a sense of purpose in people's lives.''
The President's defense of the role of faith-based organizations made some people uneasy about what they believed to be the principle of separation of church and state. Fears were expressed about government money building churches and services being provided only to those who participated in religious ceremonies. This fear had been stoked by concerns over the inclusion of the charitable choice provision in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which allowed taxpayer-financed social service funding of churches in some welfare programs. However, those expressing such concerns ignored the long and successful history of partnership between government and faith-based organizations—a history that did not include government sponsorship of religion or forced conversions.
From the founding of the Republic, government has worked with faith-based organizations to build and operate schools and provide other social services where government was less capable of doing so. After the Civil War, the Freedman's Bureau, established to provide services for the millions of newly emancipated African Americans, went into partnership with faith-based organizations such as the American Missionary Association to build schools, supply food and deliver other vital services for people adapting to life after slavery.
For more than 150 years, the Young Men's Christian Association has offered health and fitness programs, shelter, child care and other programs to people of all creeds and races. Today, the 2,617 YMCAs comprise the largest not-for-profit community service organization in America.
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Catholic Charities, founded in 1910, has worked diligently to eliminate poverty, support families and empower communities across America and serve the needs of more than seven million people each year. Catholic Charities provides such services as food banks and soup kitchens, educational enrichment, counseling and mental health, temporary and permanent housing and many other community interventions.
Beginning in the 20th century, government engaged in partnerships with faith-based organizations on overseas programming to deliver famine and disaster relief, refugee aid and other assistance in development programs. One such organization is Catholic Relief Services, one of our witnesses today, which has been providing services through government funding for more than 60 years.
Beginning in the 1950s, World Vision, a Christian relief and development organization, has concentrated on tackling the causes of poverty worldwide and provided food, education, health care and economic opportunities to people around the world. An estimated 87% of World Vision funding goes directly to programs.
Despite this record of success without mixing government and religion and without widespread discrimination in services, critics continue to express doubts about the ability of faith-based organizations to provide services due to limitations based on the very faith they profess. These doubts are expressed most often in terms of services provided for victims of HIV–AIDS.
The Government of Uganda, under the leadership of President Yoweri Museveni, has pioneered the ABC model of AIDS. ABC stands for Abstinence (especially for youth), Be Faithful for committed couples and Condoms where sexually active people are unable or unwilling to practice celibacy.
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In the early 1990s, an estimated 30% of adult Ugandans were HIV-positive. Through the ABC program, the rate of HIV infection declined to 12% by 1999, and is estimated to be five percent today. This past January, my staff and I visited Uganda to see firsthand how effective this program has been.
What we found was a partnership, not only between government and faith-based organizations, but also a complementary system in which the faith-based organizations concentrated on the behavior modifications elements of the AIDS control program in Uganda—the A and B—while secular organizations handled the C by distributing condoms. This program works in Uganda because organizations are allowed to do what they do best and are not forced to betray their ideals or provide services in which they do not believe. Secular organizations that do not believe in the behavior modification elements of the ABC program would be as reluctant to engage in them as faith-based organizations would be in delivering condoms.
While the HIV–AIDS program in Uganda, managed through the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief had a cooperative relationship with faith-based organizations, sadly, that was not the case we found with the Global Fund in Uganda. In Uganda, as well as apparently other countries, the Global Fund somehow fails to fund faith-based organizations in proportion to the services they provide. In most African countries, faith-based organizations deliver a majority of the health care services—in some cases more than two-thirds of the health care services received—yet only 5–6% of Global Fund support is given to faith-based organizations.
USAID Administrator Randall Tobias, formerly the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, said: ''Faith-based and community organizations have a reach, authority and legitimacy that make them critical partners in the fight against HIV–AIDS.'' Faith-based organizations also have another role to play—as an integral part of civil society in African nations.
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Last year, Gregory Simpkins of my staff visited Zimbabwe during the midst of one of the cruelest campaigns against a population ever initiated by a government. In an operation whose name translates to ''take out the trash,'' the Government of Zimbabwe destroyed tens of thousands of homes and businesses in a relentless effort to eliminate the informal sector. When nearly three-quarters of a million people found themselves homeless and without a means of earning a living, and non-governmental organizations were prevented from providing assistance, Zimbabwean churches took the lead in helping the homeless.
In country after country in Africa, churches and mosques deliver services as part of their regular activities. When they and their affiliated organizations receive government funds to help those in need, government is actually building on existing networks of service. This multiplier effect allows aid dollars to go much further. Moreover, as Administrator Tobias said, faith-based organizations possess ''a reach, authority and legitimacy'' that makes them natural allies in any effort to provide help to those in need at a grassroots level.
Far from being a Western intrusion in African life, working with faith-based organizations in Africa is actually a means of connecting with African heritage. African nations have a long history of integrating religion and spiritual awareness, and anyone who has spent time in Africa understands that faith is not considered outside the realm of public life there.
So long as faith-based organizations adhere to the rules concerning the separation of publicly-funded activities and religious activities and do not discriminate in the provision of their taxpayer-funded programming, the alliance of government and faith-based organizations should continue this successful tradition.
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Though we have little, if any, empirical evidence quantifying the success of this public-private partnership, its very longevity attests to its success. Our hearing today is intended to examine whether the President's faith-based initiative is indeed opening public space for religious organizations or whether this initiative contains a hidden ''glass ceiling,'' as one of our witnesses today describes it.
U.S. aid programs in Africa and elsewhere should be effective, but compassionate. The partnership between government and faith-based organizations and government has historically achieved these goals. We must see that this record of achievement is continued.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman for calling this very important hearing on the role of faith-based organizations in United States programming in Africa. Members of the faith community and faith-based institutions, as has been clearly mentioned by the Chairman, have been at the forefront of development in Africa and in many developing nations, in Latin America and in the Caribbean. United States faith-based organizations, FBOs, have a long history of providing services in Africa. Whether it is providing safe water to rural communities or convening occasional youth training, these organizations have been directly involved in grassroots efforts to eliminate poverty and improve the quality of life.
United States faith-based organizations have established themselves in Africa, filling the gap of government and international community organizations. They have been credited with improving health statistics and timely delivering of disaster and humanitarian assistance, among other things in many countries throughout the world.
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One reason faith-based organizations have been so successful in Africa, in my opinion, is due to the pivotal role of the church, and the role that the church has played in serving as an advocate for justice in many countries. Even during colonialization, the church was a beacon of hope for people who were trying to have their nations thrust off the cloak of colonialism and the church stood usually on the right side of those issues.
As an example, the role of the church in dismantling apartheid was very important, and even the demonstrations led by the church, especially in divestment in South Africa, which really was led by many church organizations. The Riverside Church in New York and others that led the way in divestment in South Africa was one of the goals, one of the various means that was used to finally dismantle apartheid.
Faith community can be a positive force for fostering peace, in fighting the war against oppression and religious discrimination. Christian groups in Sudan and the United States work together to get attention of President Bush in order to raise the level of United States engagement in Sudan. As a matter of fact, it was the faith-based community that led the way in the appointment of Reverend Danforth, the former Senator, to be the special envoy for the comprehensive peace agreement between the north and the south, that civil war that raged for 20 years and took the lives of 2 million people and 4 million displaced was primarily by the evangelical community and we have had tremendous support.
Congressman Wolf, probably the single most important person in the struggle against Sudan for decades, and Congressman Tancredo and Royce, who, in the past, have really been there and of course our Chairman now, we have had strong support from the evangelical community. It was also in the evangelical community that I think raised the awareness of HIV and AIDS to the President of this country. When the Bush Administration came in, HIV and AIDS was not an overwhelming priority, and as a matter of fact, the office on HIV and AIDS from the previous Administration was dismantled and taken out of the area of the White House. But because of strong support from many of the evangelical community, especially from child to parent, parent to child transmission, and the retroviral drugs that were suggested, we have seen a total metamorphis where we have seen PEPFAR and $15 million being designated by the Administration to deal with HIV and AIDS over a 5-year period, strictly a push from the evangelical community to change the policy.
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And so there has been much support from Samaritan's Purse that flies around in places in Africa where you can't get to. They took me into southern Sudan recently to go to a memorial service for Dr. John Garang who died a year ago in July from a helicopter crash, and it was Samaritan's Purse who was able to provide a plane to get me into Juba where there were no planes going at the time. So they have been involved for so many years. As a matter of fact, I felt very comfortable because Samaritan's Purse, when they take off, the pilot comes and says a prayer. I kind of didn't know whether—how to take it—but I certainly accepted it, and we got in and out safely.
But there is no question that these organizations have done so much. And of course Catholic Relief Services has been on the scene forever and doing outstanding work throughout the world. I would also like to mention and amplify what the Chairman said about the YMCA. Their headquarters in Geneva—had the privilege to serve as chairman of the World YMCA's Refugee Rehabilitation Committee in Geneva from 1973 to 1981, and went to many, many countries, including Uganda, to meet with Idi Amin about the expulsion of the Asians in 1972 from Uganda; about the fact that this was wrong, that a race of people would be expelled in total from a country. And so the YMCA is currently in about 30 countries doing work with refugees and rehabilitation and has been doing so since its founding, actually, in the 1840s. So we know the importance of faith-based organizations. Christians, Muslim, Jewish, whatever the faith, these organizations continue to provide essential assistance to the world's community worldwide.
It is important to ensure that our policies encourage collaboration and dialogue among the different organizations and communities of different faiths. We should also recognize that there are numerous countries in Africa where Islam is a major religion. Our policy should thus also reflect balanced support for all established faith-based organizations that give priority to poverty elimination and development.
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It is equally important that these organizations have a keen awareness of the local value system where they operate. This is especially important in their education program, such as in their HIV/AIDS prevention programs. These organizations have a responsibility to provide comprehensive information to their respective communities.
I wish you the best in your development activities, and let us all be partners for peace, justice and the elimination of poverty. It is one of the millennium goals of the UN to halve abject poverty by 2015, and I know your organizations will be very helpful in those goals. Thank you.
I am going to have to leave to attend a meeting we have called with the Arab League dealing with Sudan. We believe that the Arab League has not been positive in their relations to the genocide in Darfur. I will have to leave. I hope to be back before the meeting is adjourned.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. Mr. Tancredo.
Mr. TANCREDO. I have no comments.
Mr. SMITH. Ms. McCollum.
Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am anxious to hear the testimony. I too in my travels have been very proud, especially being a person of faith myself, of the Catholic Church when I have traveled and seen some of the Catholic mission work in Africa. I used to hear about it as a little child when I would be in Mass sometimes. The opportunity to see that the work is still going on and the wonderful people who have dedicated their lives to it in Africa and I know in other places around the world.
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But, Mr. Chair, I do hope that what we also can get out of this hearing is a better understanding of how grants are awarded and how sometimes when certain groups had been ruled as not acceptable, then they still end up with a grant; and more oversight from Congress on what organizations have submitted grants and which organizations have received grants, and then follow-up as to how we really tracked how well the grant was lived up to.
Thank you, Mr. Chair for having this hearing.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much.
I would now like to introduce our first very distinguished witness, Ms. Terri Hasdorff, who is the Director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the United States Agency for International Development. Prior to her current position she worked to establish the Alabama Governor's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and served as its Executive Director. Ms. Hasdorff also served in the White House as an assistant to the chief liaison for the President to the faith-based community, and has had various positions on Capitol Hill, and that is where I got to know her originally; and I wanted her to know how deeply I respect the work she has done and the competence she brings to the job. Ms. Hasdorff.
STATEMENT OF MS. TERRI HASDORFF, DIRECTOR, FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVES OFFICE, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Ms. HASDORFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, as the director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you today and to update you on our work at the United States Agency for International Development with faith-based organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. I would like to ask if my entire statement can be submitted for the record.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. HASDORFF. I have had the privilege of working with the Faith-Based and Community Initiative and the charitable choice language when I worked here on the Hill for Congressman J.C. Watts and Congressman Mark Souder. In addition, I was asked to establish the first Governor's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the State of Alabama, and was able to see firsthand through that experience how the Faith-Based and Community Initiative is making an impact on the lives of individuals and communities.
I have only served in my current position for a little over a month, but I look forward to this exciting new challenge and believe this initiative can be used to make a difference in the lives of people around the world.
In today's testimony, I would like to address our experience working in partnership with faith- and community-based organizations to achieve our foreign assistance objectives and describe the results we are seeing.
As you are aware, sub-Saharan Africa is the world's poorest region. Over half of its 700 million people live on less than $1 per day. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has completely overwhelmed many health systems and impoverished families. The aftermath of lingering conflict and armed strife have exacted a huge toll on the people of this region, severely limiting economic growth and challenging the delivery of much-needed social services.
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USAID learned early in its history that faith-based and community-based organizations are on the forefront of meeting human needs around the world and are excellent implementing partners for development programs because of their dedication to result, their ability to reach the grassroots level of society, and their capacity to mobilize societies for positive change.
Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, talks about how no matter where you are in the world, even if there is no electricity, no running water and no real infrastructure, even if they are meeting under a tree, you can still always find a church. This is a resource that cannot be ignored when working with hard-to-reach populations.
In Executive Order 13279, President Bush established a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at USAID. The Center has worked to fulfill the President's Executive Order in several ways. First, we respond to direct inquiries. Faith-based and community organizations call the Agency almost daily asking for information on how to obtain USAID funding for their projects around the world, many of which are to provide services in Africa. My staff also meets regularly with these organizations and groups, or individually whenever possible.
One of the primary functions of the Center is to provide outreach, training and technical assistance. In addition, we work to build intermediary relationships so that small faith- and community-based organizations that lack the capacity to manage large sums of Federal dollars can partner with larger organizations that are already receiving USAID funding.
It is important to note that USAID partners with groups representing diverse faiths in its work in Africa. Because of the fact that Africa is host to the largest Muslim population in the world, USAID is utilizing partnerships with many Muslim as well as Christian and non-faith-based organizations, in addition to building many interfaith alliances.
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One example of upcoming work with faith-based organizations is beginning to occur in West Africa through the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership. USAID, while in the initial phases of programming for Niger and Chad, is seeking to expand our partnerships to work with local indigenous faith-based organizations.
In Uganda faith-based organizations also play unique roles in providing home-based care for people and families affected by HIV/AIDS, mobilizing and referring people to service delivery points, spearheading HIV prevention with particular emphasis on abstinence and mutual fidelity, as well as providing end-of-life care and post-bereavement support to families.
In Angola, since the end of the civil war in 2002, USAID has worked with faith-based organizations, both international and Angolan, to help the country rebuild, reintegrate and reconcile. And finally, in Sudan the role of churches and faith-based groups, not only as mediators but also as advocates, have played a pivotal role in the north-south conflict as well as in the ongoing Darfur conflict.
Agencywide, in fiscal year 2005, USAID made 347 awards totaling over $591 million to faith-based organizations. This amount is up from the 235 awards for over $521 million made in fiscal year 2004. It is important to note that in almost every case, the implementing organizations competed with other organizations for funding. This is an increase of more than 13 percent from the prior year. In fiscal year 2005, specifically in the area of HIV/AIDS, USAID has provided faith-based partners with over $23 million in assistance, with the vast majority of that aid going to sub-Saharan Africa. This total does not take into account the many subpartnerships with FBOs that would add considerably to the overall amount. Despite this positive trend, we also see that the vast majority of faith-based awards are made to a small number of groups. Therefore, it remains an important role for the Agency to continue its proactive efforts to bring on new partners to the Agency.
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Mr. Chairman, I sincerely appreciate this Committee's continuing interest in the use of faith-based organizations and USAID's critical role on the Continent of Africa. I am grateful for the opportunity to share with you how the Faith-Based and Community Initiative is making a difference in the lives of people all over the world. I cannot overstate my support of this initiative because I see on a daily basis how it draws diverse groups into incredibly innovative partnerships that can truly transform lives, communities, and even nations.
I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to serve in my current position and would now be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. SMITH. Ms. Hasdorff, thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Hasdorff follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MS. TERRI HASDORFF, DIRECTOR, FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVES OFFICE, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I am pleased to have the opportunity to appear before you as the Director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to update you on our work at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with faith-based organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. In today's testimony, I'd like to address our experience working in partnership with faith-based organizations to achieve our foreign assistance objectives and describe the results we are seeing.
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As you are aware, sub-Saharan Africa is the world's poorest region: over half of its 700 million people live on less than $1 per day. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has completely overwhelmed many health systems and impoverished families. The aftermath of lingering conflict and armed strife have exacted a huge toll on the people of this region, severely limiting economic growth and challenging the delivery of much-needed social services. As a United States Government Agency (USG), we engage with a wide variety of partners to advance our work and we find faith-based organizations to be critical to this effort.
USAID'S RATIONALE FOR WORKING WITH FAITH BASED ORGANIZATIONS
The Agency's underlying rationale for working with faith based organizations (FBOs) is simple: in many of the difficult contexts in which we work, FBOs have proven to be effective. The following quote provided by Samaritan's Purse points to several comparative advantages of FBOs:
''The Church (or other FBOs including traditional healers) can be viewed as the largest, most stable and most extensively dispersed non-governmental organization in any country. Churches are respected within communities and most have existing resources, structures and systems upon which to build. They possess the human, physical, technical and financial resources needed to support and implement small and large-scale initiatives. They can undertake these actions in a very cost-effective manner, due to their ability to leverage volunteer and other resources with minimal effort.''
USAID learned early in its history that faith-based and community-based organizations are on the forefront of meeting human needs around the world, and are excellent implementing partners for development programs because of their dedication to results, their ability to reach the grassroots level of society and their capacity to mobilize societies for positive change. Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA talks about how no matter where you are in the world, even if there is no electricity, no running water and no real infrastructure . . . even if they are meeting under a tree, you can still almost always find a church. This is a resource that cannot be ignored when working with hard to reach populations.
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I am amazed at the willingness of faith and community based organizations to join together with one another as well as private and public sector agencies in order to combine their strengths to confront critical issues. When properly implemented the Faith-Based Initiative brings together unique collaborative partners who design and deliver effective and efficient social service delivery systems. To say it more simply, when properly implemented the Faith-Based Initiative frees average people to join with other average people to do extraordinary things in their communities . . . extraordinary things that are so unique to their village or hometown that no government agency or political body could ever construct or mandate a solution so exquisitely tailored to heal individuals & families and the communities in which they live.
Because of this, USAID has been partnering with faith-based and community organizations since its inception. When it comes to meeting human needs in far away and hard to reach places, faith-based and community organizations get results. Therefore, USAID is putting the vast capabilities and resources that faith-based organizations provide to good use in Africa.
OUTREACH TO FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS
By Executive Order (13280), dated December 12, 2002, President Bush established a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (CFBCI) at USAID. At that time the President also issued an Executive Order (13279) ''to guide Federal agencies in formulating and developing policies with implications for faith-based organizations and other community organizations, to ensure equal protection of the laws for faith-based and community organizations, to further the national effort to expand opportunities for, and strengthen the capacity of, faith-based and other community organizations so that they may better meet social needs . . . and to ensure the economical and efficient administration and completion of Government contracts. . . .'' (Executive Order 13279, Introduction).
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The USAID CFBCI has worked to fulfill this portion of the executive order through a multi-faceted approach. First, we respond to direct inquiries. Faith-based and community organizations call the Agency daily asking for information on how to obtain USAID funding for their projects around the world. My staff also meets regularly with these organizations in groups or individually whenever possible. This assistance takes place primarily through facilitating meetings with appropriate USAID staff either in Washington or in our overseas missions. These meetings help build institutional working relationships with the Agency; and assist FBOs in their efforts to secure USAID funding. This service provides these potential new partners, and those existing partners who would like to expand their relationship with USAID, with essential, up-to-date information on USAID and its programs.
Feedback provided to Faith-Based or Community Organizations (FBCO) is practical and honest, and often includes some form of technical assistance. FBCOs that lack the capacity to manage large sums of federal dollars are encouraged to partner with larger organizations that already receive USAID funding. We also encourage partnerships and the formation of consortiums to enhance the ability of FBCOs to compete when applying for federal assistance.
Another important aspect of outreach is CFBCI participation in conferences that target faith-based and community organizations. CFBCI has co-sponsored, with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, conferences for Faith-Based and Community Organizations. Over a dozen conferences have been held in cities across the U.S. with attendance ranging from 500 to 1,700. Participants are given an overview on CFBCI and answers to frequently asked questions, including what they can and cannot do with government funding. Participants are able to get specific questions answered on funding opportunities from Agency staff. These conferences provide a unique opportunity for FBOs to interact and exchange valuable information. Contacts are often made that help smaller FBCOs in the competition process.
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CFBCI produces materials that highlight opportunities of particular interest to smaller and medium sized faith-based or community organizations. Examples include American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA), Ocean Freight Reimbursement, Limited Excess Property Program and micro enterprise development. Each opportunity includes a web link for more information and contact information for a person representing each program.
POLICY CHANGES TO IMPLEMENT THE INITIATIVE
As with all of USAID's partners, faith-based organizations must comply with the same rules and regulations as any other non-government entity that receives Federal funding from USAID to provide critical services. These include the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rules and regulations governing federal grants and contracts. In addition to the rules and regulations applicable to all USAID contractors and grantees, faith-based partners are prohibited from using federal assistance for inherently religious activities, including proselytizing, prayer services and religious study. A faith-based organization may still engage in these activities, but they must be privately funded, separate in either time or location from the secular activities funded with federal assistance and voluntary for program beneficiaries. USAID currently funds faith and community-based organizations that represent a wide variety of faiths and denominations including those of no faith affiliation at all.
USAID's CFBCI makes itself available as an ombudsman to which faith-based or community organizations can turn if they feel that they are being discriminated against by the agency or contractors. However, the number of complaints has been few, and those rare instances were resolved quickly. Where a compliance issue is raised about a USAID-funded organization, it may be directed to the USAID mission in country, the USAID regional Bureau, the Office of Acquisition and Assistance (OAA) in Washington, or the USAID Inspector General. All complaints received by USAID are investigated, and if warranted, the program in question may be subjected to financial review or formal audit.
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MEASURING RESULTS
Agency wide, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2005, USAID made 347 awards totaling over $591 million to Faith-Based organizations. This amount is up from the 235 awards for over $521 million made in FY 2004. It is important to note that in almost every case, the implementing organizations competed with other organizations for funding. This is an increase of more than 13% from the prior year. In FY 2005, specifically in the area of HIV/AIDS, USAID's Office of HIV/AIDS provided faith-based partners with over $23 million in assistance, with the vast majority of that aid going to Sub-Saharan Africa. This total does not take into account the many sub-partnerships with FBOs which would add considerably to the total amount.
Despite this positive trend, we also see that the vast majority of faith-based awards are made to a small number of groups. Therefore, it remains an important role for the Agency to continue its proactive efforts to bring on new partners to the Agency.
Four examples of the USG's efforts to bring on new partners in Africa are detailed below. These programs implement the requirement set forth in Executive Order 13280 Sec. 3(d), to ''propose the development of innovative pilot and demonstration programs to increase the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in Federal as well as State and local initiatives.''
CORE Initiative—(Community Responding to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic). USAID provides strategic assistance, organizational development, direct grants, and other support to community and faith-based groups in developing countries. Geared to utilizing faith networks, priority is given to groups who commit their own resources and demonstrate the ability to meet needs for care, support, and stigma reduction.
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President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Annual Program Statement for Abstinence and Healthy Choices for Youth (ABY). Through this procurement, $100 million in new grants will be utilized by faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, and other groups to mobilize rapidly to help adolescents, teens and young adults avoid behaviors putting them at increased risk of HIV/AIDS infection in the 15 focus countries of the President's Emergency Plan. The focus countries, which are home to more than 50 percent of HIV infections worldwide, are: Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia.
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Annual Program Statement for Orphans and Vulnerable Children affected by HIV/AIDS (OVC). $100 million in new grants to support orphans and vulnerable children as a part of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Eleven organizations, including a number of faith-based organizations, won the five-year grants through a competitive awards process. In 2003, more than 15 million children worldwide under age 18 had lost one or both parents to AIDS. By 2010, it is estimated that more than 25 million children will have lost at least one parent to AIDS. Each U.S. grant will provide care and support to orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS in at least two of the 15 focus countries of the President's Emergency Plan.
New Partners Initiative (NPI). This Initiative was announced by President Bush on Dec. 1, 2005. Through NPI, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief will provide $200 million for grants to new partners to provide HIV/AIDS prevention and care services. The Emergency Plan will reach out to organizations through NPI, working to help build their capacity and assist them in becoming new partners with the U.S. Government. USAID, along with other USG agencies, is an implementing partner of this initiative.
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EXAMPLES OF ''SUCCESS''
To more fully illustrate USAID experience in working with and through FBOs, I'd like to provide some concrete examples drawn from four African countries.
Uganda
Uganda is largely a religious country with 97% of its people claiming to be one of the following: Catholics, Anglican Protestants, Muslims, Seventh Day Adventists, or Orthodox Christians. In order to reach the mostly rural population, USAID works with organizations of faith, especially in education and health. Through support of Madrasa schools, Islamic religious education has been integrated with secular early childhood education in order to help needy three-to-five year olds better prepare for further education.
Through networks reaching into the farthest and smallest communities, religious and faith-based organizations are in a unique position to capitalize on the trust of their constituencies to provide guidance to people about health and behavioral change. The dramatic decline in HIV/AIDS prevalence recorded in the mid-1990's is partly attributed to the involvement of religious and faith-based organizations at grassroots levels and the ability of these networks to mobilize communities. Since the early 1990's, USAID/Uganda has collaborated with faith-based organizations to utilize their established networks to raise awareness, influence behavior change and fight stigma.
Faith-based organizations also play unique roles in providing home-based care for people and families affected by HIV/AIDS, mobilizing and referring people to service delivery points, spearheading HIV prevention with particular emphasis on abstinence and mutual fidelity as well as providing end-of-life care and post-bereavement support to families. The spiritual and end-of-life support is particularly critical in the context of a culture that fears speaking about death and dying.
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USAID/Uganda's partnership with faith-based organizations is currently being expanded through the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU), which unites all five traditional religious faiths in Uganda. With USAID/Uganda support since 2001, IRCU has evolved into a nationally accredited coordination mechanism for the faith-based HIV/AIDS interventions in Uganda. Using PEPFAR resources over the last two years, IRCU has provided sub-grants and technical assistance to over 100 FBOs reaching 30,000 people affected by HIV/AIDS including orphans and vulnerable children. In June 2006, USAID/Uganda signed a three year direct contract of $15 million with IRCU to further roll out prevention, care and treatment services, by targeting underserved areas and populations including those ravaged by armed conflict.
Angola
Since the end of the civil war in Angola in 2002, USAID has worked with faith-based organizations, both international and Angolan, to help the country rebuild, reintegrate and reconcile. Two prominent FBOs among the organizations that have been active partners with the USG in this effort are World Vision (WV) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Through the $75.5 million Consortium for Developmental Relief in Angola program (March 2003—December 2005) WV and CRS, along with three other non-governmental organizations, supported the resettlement and agricultural recovery process in the Planalto provinces of Kwanza Sul, Benguela, Huambo, and Bié, helping 210,000 vulnerable and food insecure households transition from emergency to development assistance.
The recovery process included activities such as distributing seeds, tools and animals for traction; strengthening extension services; rehabilitating rural infrastructure including roads, bridges, irrigation systems, community storage structures, schools and meeting centers; reforestation activities; and establishing and training community based organizations to lead conflict resolution and broad-based community participation in decision-making processes. Another project funded by the Mission enables CRS to work on grassroots reconciliation in the province of Benguela by enhancing and broadening citizen participation in local-level decision-making, community initiatives, and conflict management. Finally, the Mission supports the work of the Center for Economic Studies and Scientific Research, an independent think-tank housed in the Catholic University of Angola, which has resulted in new market oriented analyses and the development of several new publications promoting policy reform dialogue.
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Kenya
Shortly after losing his wife to AIDS in 1992, Ugandan Canon Gideon Byamugisha became the first African clergyman to openly declare his HIV-positive status. Since then, he has sought to eliminate HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination by advocating the 4 Es-empathy, empowerment, equipment, and engagement; and the 6 Ps-prayers, policies, plans, programs, personnel, and partnerships. With support from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief through USAID, clergy have recently begun to implement Canon Byamugisha's approach in Kenya.
The Kenya Network of Religious Leaders Infected and Affected by HIV/AIDS (Kenerela), the first such network in East, Central, and Southern Africa, was established in February 2004 by 44 religious leaders at a retreat in Limuru, Kenya.
While religious leaders wield significant influence in Kenya, where the vast majority of people are members of faith communities, Kenerela's pointed out that ''a deafening silence permeates religious communities with regard to HIV and AIDS.'' In April 2004, Kenerela members were given technical guidance and financial assistance from USAID via World Vision that enabled them to define their mission and begin work on a plan of work to take them through 2007. Goals include establishing eight regional branches to work ''with stakeholders in the fight against HIV/AIDS-related stigma, denial, inaction, and discrimination in our congregations, thus reducing the [HIV] prevalence to 20% within the age group of 15–49 years.''
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The POLICY Project, also in collaboration with World Vision, helped bring together 52 religious leaders from five African countries, all of whom are living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. They shared a common vision of a Kenya ''where stigma, denial, and discrimination are nonexistent'' and religious leaders ''are witnesses of hope and forces of change in their congregations and communities.'' In August 2004, Kenerela members met with members of faith-based organizations and with people living with HIV/AIDS to discuss ways to work together to reach their shared goals.
Kenerela membership now totals 1,000 in eight provinces and includes pastors, HIV-positive religious leaders, clergy who have lost or are caring for close relatives and congregants. Kenerela encourages congregations to provide home-based care, counseling, and peer education for people living with HIV/AIDS, and for local orphans and vulnerable children. Kenerela also teaches local groups how to effectively manage their projects. Perhaps Kenerela's most important function is to provide accurate information, communication, positive role models, and nonjudgmental support to people living with HIV/AIDS.
Sudan
In Sudan, churches and faith-based groups have played a critical role in the last 35 years, pushing for national, regional and inter-communal peace. Since the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement which concluded an extended peace process to end a 15-year civil war between the dissident Anyanya group and the Sudanese government, and brought relative peace to the country for a 10 year period, church groups have worked to parley issues of church and state, religious, cultural and ethnic diversity and formal mediation methodology into reconciliation processes. The role of churches and faith-based groups, not only as mediators but also as advocates, has continued in recent years, both in the North-South conflict, as well as in the ongoing Darfur conflict.
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In the South, church groups have played a part in reconciling various factions of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), and even more actively in facilitating reconciliations between warring tribes and clans. The classic example of the Wunlit Peace—brokered by the New Sudan Council of Churches with assistance from international churches through their ''people-to-people peacemaking'' methodology—reconciled the Dinka and Nuer people in 1999 and stands as a symbolic model for other ethnic groups in the South to follow.
USAID's programming has bolstered support for this methodology to be applied in reconciling other ethnic groups in conflict, particularly against the backdrop of a North-South conflict which exacerbated these tensions and divided these communities further. Sudanese faith-based groups, with support from their international sister organizations, have continued to be critically involved in quelling tensions in Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal, where they are seen as a credible, legitimate mediators for inter-communal conflict.
On this side of the ocean, FBOs continue to remain engaged in advocacy for support to the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and respect for human rights. Most recently, with the Darfur crisis, the world has witnessed how a broad-range of faith-based groups from all religions have coalesced around the Darfur cause and become a powerful advocate on the US political stage for their counterparts in Sudan.''
CONCLUSION
A particularly meaningful resource of the faith-based community to the work of USAID is its deep connections to the most vulnerable people in Africa. FBOs have been and continue to be on the front lines in places like Sudan, Angola, Rwanda, and Uganda. As faith-based organizations have a long history of working with vulnerable populations and an overall successful track record in these areas, we feel it is sound development policy to continue to support them to achieve our mutual objectives. I am encouraged by the steps that have been taken to ensure their participation and look forward to strengthening our relationships with the faith-based community as we seek to pursue our common goals.
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Mr. Chairman, I sincerely appreciate this Committee's continuing interest in the use of faith-based organizations and USAID's critical role on the continent of Africa. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to you today and share with you how the Faith-Based Initiative is making a difference in the lives of people all over the world. I cannot overstate my support of this initiative because I see on a daily basis how it draws diverse groups into incredibly innovative partnerships that can truly transform lives, communities and perhaps even nations. I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to serve in my current position and now would be happy to answer any questions you might have for me at this time.
Mr. SMITH. Let me ask you firsthand—and thank you for this data. This is really encouraging and very, very helpful to the Subcommittee. You mention, agency wide, 347 awards totaling $591 million to faith-based organizations; $591 million out of how much? Do you have that?
Ms. HASDORFF. The agency gives out about $15 billion a year total, between $3 billion and $4 billion in assistance.
Mr. SMITH. Do you know to what extent of that $3–4 billion, the subcontractors turn out to be faith-based?
Ms. HASDORFF. We do not track the subgrants. We only track the grantees that are direct. We are putting in place tracking systems that will allow us over the next year to start tracking subgrants.
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Mr. SMITH. Does that include governments too? When a government gets money for a certain program to ensure that they themselves are not, you know, excluding, for example, a faith-based organization?
Ms. HASDORFF. I will have to get back to you on that.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. If that can be—and perhaps what we are doing is to ensure that faith-based groups are not discriminated against. We hear sometimes complaints that some USAID grants—and some of them are very, very large, $150 million to this organization, $60 million to another organization—that some of the faith-based indigenous organizations have a heck of a time, and they are very, very often unsuccessful, in applying for a grant from that or subgrant from that organization. What do we do to ensure that there is complete transparency so that they are not excluded?
Ms. HASDORFF. So that faith-based groups are not excluded?
Mr. SMITH. Yes.
Ms. HASDORFF. Well, in line with what the White House faith-based initiative has implemented across the board for all agencies that are affected by that, we make sure that it is a level playing field and that faith-based groups are given the same opportunity to compete for government grants as any other nongovernment entity. So all of the grant opportunities that are available through USAID that would be eligible for faith-based organizations to apply would be made open——
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Mr. SMITH. Is there any kind of monitoring system other than the IG, perhaps GAO, that we would ask for? But is there any other kind of systematic monitoring system, either contemplated or currently in operation to ensure that if I am a subgrantee, I am living in Uganda or would like to be one, I make application for money that a local provider has money for, whatever the issue may be, and then find out that I am just shown the door summarily. What do we do to ensure that that doesn't happen?
Ms. HASDORFF. The faith-based office at USAID works with each of the offices that USAID funds across the world to make sure that they are aware of making certain that the grants that we give out are eligible for faith-based organizations to apply for. So it would be through the Center that that type of outreach would be done. In addition to that, all of the information that is through the White House Faith-Based Office that is for more of the domestic faith-based outreach that occurs, that would make sure that they understand the grants are open to them to apply for.
Mr. SMITH. Can you tell us how we can be sure that the USAID mission personnel in the field who have considerable control over how money is spent, as to whether or not they have been adequately trained and understand that the clear unmistakable congressional intent is not to exclude? I mention this for a reason. When the PEPFAR program was under consideration, and I was one of the original sponsors of Henry Hyde's bill which he considers one of his greatest triumphs in terms of legislation, I offered a number of amendments. One of them had to do with the conscience clause. We found that during the 1990s many faith-based organizations in Africa where shown the door, were told you need not apply, because they didn't want to be part of a condom distribution program. Notwithstanding the fact that they had very effective behavioral change programs, very energetic efforts to try to push the abstinence message to especially the young people in elementary and secondary schools, they literally were told, you need not apply.
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I used some of those examples during the debate on the Floor because I did offer the amendment, and it passed, to provide complete conscience for those who would prefer not to take that part of it, leaving that to someone else. We hear, anecdotally, that that still is a problem and I am wondering what is being done to ensure—I mean, this isn't a matter of just my opinion now. This is now backed with the imprimatur, if you will, the full support of the Congress of the United States, that conscience is to be respected and that an NGO or a grantee can't take it upon themselves to go their own way on this. If you are going to be a U.S.-funded contractor, these are the rules, clear and simple. You can't discriminate based on the fact that you didn't want to include some other aspects of the ABC.
Ms. HASDORFF. Mr. Chairman, let me just say that while I know that the Agency has been making great strides with this initiative, and I am pleased with a lot of the work I have seen in the past, one of my goals as the director of this office——
Mr. SMITH. And you have only been on it for a month.
Ms. HASDORFF. But it is exciting because I think there are some opportunities for additional outreach, and that is one of my goals is to work more closely with some of the mission directors. I know that that has been occurring in the past, but I think there is even more that can be done and that is one of the things I look forward to.
Mr. SMITH. One of the things that I found when I visited Uganda, and I have been to several African countries, and Greg and I saw it firsthand, many of the USAID people who were absolutely skeptical of the A and the B had come around, because they saw that young people who were given the right kind of message with the right kind of reinforcement were able to change their behavior, which obviously benefits their health and their well-being. I mean, I met young people who were dedicated themselves that they would wait until marriage before engaging in sexual activity, thereby practically eliminating—unless they used bad needles—risk of contagion by AIDS. But they came around. They told me, as candidly as they could possibly say, that they were skeptical. And I remember in the 1990s there were people who laughed at it. They laughed at Museveni and the ABC model and the First Lady for what they were trying to do. It didn't fit into their paradigm on what a fight against AIDS should look like. I still think there needs to be some educating done along those lines.
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Let me ask you, if I could, what weight the churches and mosques and synagogues get, in the fact that they have such considerable infrastructure? What always impresses me when you go to a faith-based effort is it is not something that has to be started from the ground up, and people employed who had not been doing this before or don't have, you know, the passion that so many of the churches and faith-based health organizations have. And especially as it relates to the volunteer base. I mentioned Our Lady of Africa in my opening. Their volunteer base is almost, you know, within limits but you know it is just—if they need people to do something, they have them and they meet every week not just for Mass but there is this constant number of people willing to engage in this effort. So in terms of dollars spent by the U.S. Government, we get such bang for the buck in terms of good things happening on the ground.
And I am wondering when grants are being reviewed, does that kind of infrastructure have—add to points or whether or not they get the grant? And I would add to that, I only made brief mention of what I saw for years, but the massive immunization efforts—that wasn't just in Latin America. That was all over Africa and all over the world. And had it not been for churches, volunteers and the base that they provided, that would have been, you know—UNICEF and our USAID would have been ineffective in getting the world's children immunized. So the weight given to infrastructure that a church brings with it.
Ms. HASDORFF. I think in the grant process at USAID, basically what they are looking for is the best partner for whatever social service it is to provide, and many times faith-based organizations are that partner. Obviously the leverage they have with resources, volunteers, all the things that you mention, would definitely be taken into consideration. I know that you know they are just looking for the best partner to work with for whatever service it is. And many times that is a faith-based organization.
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Mr. SMITH. One final question. Local indigenous organizations that may not be the most adept at writing grants but may be the best individual or group to actually implement a grant, what kind of technical assistance is being provided to them to overcome what some of the more savvy K Street grant writers have over them in writing a grant for USAID or anywhere else? And I do have another question. If you could speak to the New Partners Initiative and how well that is going.
Ms. HASDORFF. One of the things that the office—that the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives does is address that very concern that you were talking about. A lot of times for the smaller local NGOs, it is very difficult for them to have the same leverage for receiving grants. What we encourage them to do is partner with larger intermediary organizations who can assist them with that technical assistance that they need, or our office will work with them as well if they are applying directly for a grant. But we encourage that type of collaboration quite a bit.
Mr. SMITH. Do you help marry them up with the other organization?
Ms. HASDORFF. We do.
Mr. SMITH. Now, from the evidence you see in the field, does the Global Fund do this? Maybe you are not the right person to ask on this—it might be somebody from HHS or USAID that handles the Global Fund—but as I said at the outset, the message we are getting back—and as a matter of fact, the Catholic bishops of Africa recently complained bitterly that they provided 40 percent of all the health care in Africa and they get 4 to 6 percent of all the Global Fund moneys. And that is by design, not by default.
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I am wondering whether or not we are finding that out in the field as well, because obviously we want to work side by side with the Global Fund.
Ms. HASDORFF. I would have to take that one for the record because I have only been there for a month so. I am not sure about that, but I think that it is. And as far as the New Partners Initiative, I know that that has been very successful and I am once again still delving into that, but from everything that I am hearing, it is welcoming a lot of new faith- and community-based groups to the grants process that were not being—that we were not receiving or we were not accessing that in the past.
Mr. SMITH. And our mission in getting the message out that these potential moneys are out there for them?
Ms. HASDORFF. Yes. Outreach has been conducted very heavily on that. And our office has done been quite a bit on that well as well.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Ms. McCollum.
Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You mentioned Healthy Choices Initiative in your testimony. And when I was getting ready for the hearing, one of the things we do is go on the Internet and we pull down articles and talk to other Members of Congress. When USAID awarded the AYB grants in 2004, there was an organization that made a grant and was named Children's AIDS Fund. It was headed by a Ms. Anita Smith. And USAID did an independent review board that makes recommendations on this grant that deemed that the Children's AIDS Fund was not suitable for funding due to their lack of experience in international aid.
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And I do agree with the Chairman. We need to figure out a way to nurture and move along indigenous groups so that they can apply and do that. So I am not—I think that that is a noble role for us to do. But this group—and this person, her name was Anita Smith—applied for that.
It appears from your testimony you are in the process of awarding new grants. Now, considering the Children's AIDS Fund was ruled not eligible for funding, yet it turned out it received a grant anyways, what are the criteria, and could you provide to this Committee the criteria that the board, that the panel—I think it would be interesting for the Chair and I, how you determine whether or not a grant is awarded. And then maybe some goals and objectives you have in order to help nurture and sponsor indigenous groups to be able to be at a place where they can receive a grant.
So if you could provide that for us, that would be good because one of the things that—with some of the other funding we are doing for development funding, we are saying you have to meet all these goals, these objectives, these specific measures. And I have been out in the field, as others, when we have traveled the country and saying no, we are very, very serious about this accountability here. And so I would like to see how we are holding people accountable.
So do you have a report on the first $100 million that has been awarded on this program that you could provide for the Committee along with that?
Ms. HASDORFF. Absolutely. We will have to get back to you.
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Ms. MCCOLLUM. I am curious as to how the money was used and how you have tracked your results, so that if there is a program out there that maybe has a C grade, USAID can maybe interject some way to get that up to a B-plus to keep—especially if it is an indigenous or local-run program, so that we make sure we are doing that.
I had another question, too, and it seems like you are struggling with getting tracking. So I would be interested in knowing how many grants were actually made to Muslim groups and in what countries. And then you mention this terrorism. Would you—what was that again. Terrorism——
Ms. HASDORFF. What I mentioned was the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership and that is a new program that we started up in West Africa.
Ms. MCCOLLUM. Did that fund money come out of USAID's funding program?
Ms. HASDORFF. I will have to take that question for the record.
Ms. MCCOLLUM. And could you take a look at that, please? And could you also provide to the Committee and the membership of the panel on how it is selected for USAID to go over these grants?
Ms. HASDORFF. Yes, ma'am. I will take that question.
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Ms. MCCOLLUM. That would be great. And welcome. You have only been there a month?
Ms. HASDORFF. Yes.
Ms. MCCOLLUM. I am sorry for all the questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Tancredo.
Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think my question is just a continuation, in a way, of what you have heard, because in your testimony you talk about the concern you have is that a relatively small number of faith-based organizations obtain the bulk of the grants. And so I wondered what you could tell us is the exact problem.
I know it is the same as—the question about well, how do we get indigenous groups in there too? But can you tell there is some common element to the grantee—the grantees—that we can identify as being either a positive or a negative situation? And it is really, I suppose, all of our concern that we have had a lot of information given to the Committee, given to individual Members of the Committee at various times about the hostility that exists out there in the field, hostility toward the faith-based organizations on the part of other NGOs. And somewhat understandable I suppose. Here is a new group coming in to essentially take part of the action that they have—that these other organizations had been used to having to themselves. But are there things that you can do—well you know, first of all, what is the reason for this small number? And are there things you can do to ameliorate the kind of hostility that may actually still be out there?
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Ms. HASDORFF. Well, Congressman, I think the Faith-Based and Community Initiative as a whole has seen—basically you have small faith- and community-based groups that are small nonprofits that many times have a hard time accessing grants just because of their lack of knowledge or capacity.
Mr. TANCREDO. Sophistication.
Ms. HASDORFF. So that is across the board. What we are trying to do at USAID is reach out and do more outreach, training and technical assistance, looking for ways of building smaller and community-based groups to allow them to have access; also partnering them with larger groups that are already receiving funding that can work as intermediaries so they can partner with that group. Those are all things that are being done to try to address that issue.
But as far as the hostility, I have not seen that during my time there at USAID. It seems there is a real excitement to welcoming new partners, and I think that the New Partners Initiative and many other things that are being done there are opening up the doors for smaller groups to have access.
Mr. TANCREDO. Well, although I am encouraged to hear about the fact that you may not have seen that in the brief time that you have been there, I will assure you that there is a great deal of—some anecdotal, some quite objective—information available to lead us to the conclusion that there are tensions that exist out there. So as your tenure develops, I just hope that you are sensitive to this potential problem. Whether it is real or perceived incorrectly, that is the thing I would like you to be able to tell us the next time we meet.
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Mr. SMITH. Dr. Boozman?
Mr. BOOZMAN. I don't have anything.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you so very much for your testimony. We look forward to staying in touch with you. We will have you back in a few months, maybe by the middle of December if that would work.
Ms. HASDORFF. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you.
I would like to now ask to the witness table our second panel, beginning with Mr. Ken Hackett who is the President of Catholic Relief Services, the official international relief and development agency of the U.S. Catholic community. He oversees operations in 99 countries and commands a global staff of more than 4,000. Mr. Hackett joined Catholic Relief Services more than 30 years ago and has served on posts throughout Africa, as well as a variety of positions in Catholic Relief headquarters in Baltimore. In July 1993, Mr. Hackett was named Executive Director of Catholic Relief Services and he was appointed President in 2003.
We will then hear from the Reverend Edward Phillips who was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1974, currently serves as the Managing Director of the Archdiocese of Nairobi, Eastern Deanery AIDS Relief Program. He also serves as the country administrator for a Marquette University nursing college in Kenya where he runs a national training program for HIV/AIDS care. As a long-term resident of Kenya, Reverend Phillips has also been appointed to Kenya's Ministry of Health, HIV/TB National Steering Committee.
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And finally we will hear from Mr. Ken Isaacs, who currently serves as the Vice President of Programs and Government Programs for Samaritan's Purse, a Christian relief organization with activities in over 100 countries worldwide. Mr. Isaacs also served as International Program Director for 17 years. In between his two positions with Samaritan's Purse, Mr. Isaacs served as the Director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Relief Assistance within the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Mr. Hackett, if you could begin, please.
STATEMENT OF MR. KEN HACKETT, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES
Mr. HACKETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to appear before this Committee to discuss this most important of issues. And I would also like to take a moment to thank this Committee, and you in particular, for the work that you have done on the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act and on the Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security and Democracy Act. This is tremendously beneficial to the people in those two countries. Thank you.
If I may, I would like to summarize my prepared statement that could be entered for the record.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, your full statement will be entered as a part of the record.
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Mr. HACKETT. As an organization of the Catholic Church in the United States, and one that has been the recipient of U.S. Government foreign assistance for over six decades, we found the Faith-Based and Community Initiative to be a very positive development. However, from the perspective of Catholic Relief Services, we cannot conclude with any empirical evidence that more funding has come to us directly as a result of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative. And I did a little survey earlier in the week among the other major faith-based organizations—World Vision, Lutheran World Relief, UMCOR of the Methodist, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency—and basically everybody felt the same way. Funding did not come because we were faith-based or religiously grounded. We compete for U.S. Government money like anybody else, or any of the for-profits.
If I may, I would like to offer a few perspectives on the Faith-Based and Community Initiative and a few suggestions on where it might go for the future. While we recognize that the primary intent of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative was not directed to large religiously based groups like ourselves or the Lutherans or the Salvation Army, I would suggest that all of us have noticed an increased openness to religious organizations at different levels within the Administration. The fact that there is in each Cabinet office and department someone specifically designated with a faith-based organization portfolio is what we deem a very constructive change.
And the related conscience clause provision in the HIV authorization has also helped to ensure that faith-based organizations can compete on a level playing field without sacrificing our moral values. And I commend you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, for your leadership in that regard.
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Second, we have witnessed an increase in smaller churches' and religiously inspired groups' engagement in Africa. These groups had limited contact with Africa, and now have been able to increase their presence. I won't directly attribute that to the Faith-Based and Community Initiative, but there may be some linkage. This reality, in our view, offers a hope that these groups may be able to bring back to the United States a more profound understanding of the African people and contribute in a deeper way to the dialogue about foreign aid programs for Africa.
Further, the great diversity of American values represented by this broad array of churches and faith-inspired groups itself embodies, in a way, our democratic traditions and values. The Faith-Based and Community Initiative has brought opportunities for many smaller organizations with little experience working abroad, much less in Africa. But at the same time, their learning curve is steep and their missteps often confusing to many.
Third, the foreign aid bureaus of the government have demonstrated increased sensitivity that the faith-based organizations bring values and approaches that the U.S. Government itself sometimes forgets. So there is some positive change there.
When I look back over my 35 years of dealing in this type of work, I see that in the past, sometimes the U.S. Government foreign aid bureaucracy often didn't give much credence to such values as social justice or the role of civil society or the dignity of the individual.
A fourth concern for me lies with the fact that some contractors look to partner with faith-based organizations to increase their competitiveness. The money is obviously an attraction to many faith-based organizations, both American and African. But the consequences of the often fundamentally different approaches between contractors and faith-based organizations can often lead to fractured relations, hard feelings, and possibly even compromised missions. It is the relationships with local affiliates and branches and partners that make American faith-based entities effective in their outreach and assistance to groups in Africa.
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A fifth concern is the desire of the U.S. bureaucracy, something you were just talking about, to deal directly with religiously affiliated institutional partners. I want to see African indigenous agencies grow and flourish and develop, but there are some problems along the way. And I will give you an example. Recently one very troublesome case happened in Tanzania, involving a longstanding AIDS program of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dar es Salaam that CRS had been funding for over a decade. The Archdiocese was informed that whether they liked it or not—and they didn't like it—if they wanted PEPFAR funding, they would have to agree to accept it directly from USAID and not from Catholic Relief Services. As members of the same church family, we don't intend to sever our relationships with such partners merely to meet USAID's or the U.S. Government's short-term funding approaches.
And lastly I would like to comment on the direction of foreign assistance overall. Obviously, as we all know, terrorism is a deep concern for our country, and it is understandable that a significant portion of overall foreign assistance must be directed toward helping countries deal with that threat. But our increased attention to terrorism has produced a distinct decrease in attention to the worst impacts of poverty.
As a member of the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, I am very proud of the strides we have made in that unique effort to help countries deal with poverty reduction. We achieve that goal through conscious and deliberate investments in economic growth, as well as social infrastructure and policy changes that are truly integral to the overall process of growth in poverty reduction.
As I hear and read statements of our higher-level government officials concerning the approach being taken to foreign aid that deal with human development as well as stability and security, I appreciate them. However, I am troubled by reports coming out of some U.S. Embassies and USAID missions that all programs need to be justified solely on the basis of counterterrorism. There appears to be a disconnect. We see deep cutbacks in support for food aid programs, safety net programs and United States Government programs that reach the poorest segments of African societies.
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And I was wondering to myself as I prepared this, how I would ask the Missionaries of Charity in Ethiopia to justify their severely reduced appeal for any food aid allotment, which they use to feed the most destitute in Addis Ababa and elsewhere, in counterterrorism terms. However, I remain hopeful that our Government bureaucracy will recognize that it can be effective when it supports the expression of the most profound American values expressed by the broad array of American faith-based and civil society groups.
When the government attempts to impose its motivations and agendas on private faith-based and nongovernmental groups, it risks compromising the good work they do and it lays open the perception they are merely tools of our government. Worst of all, the erosion of basic values in foreign assistance diminishes the U.S. goal of building peace, justice, and stability in our world. I thank you very much for this opportunity.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hackett follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. KEN HACKETT, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES
Good Afternoon, I wish to commend Subcommittee Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Payne, and Members of the Subcommittee for calling this hearing and offering Catholic Relief Services (CRS) the opportunity to testify on the Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI). In my testimony I will:
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First, discuss our impressions of the FBCI;
Second, describe some examples of how we work with the local Catholic Church and other faith-based partners in Africa;
Third and most importantly, outline the challenges facing faith-based organizations like CRS as a result of the shift in U.S. foreign assistance policy toward a narrow focus on security and anti-terrorism.
Let me open by stating that the faith-based initiative is a positive development that recognizes the history of good work and vast potential of this nation's religious institutions. We believe it gives credence to the effectiveness of faith-based humanitarian organizations like CRS, Lutheran World Relief, Church World Service, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and our many other colleagues in the field who have provided decades of assistance to poor people around the world. At CRS, we believe that our grounding in our faith is an asset in our work, because it gives us an ability to project values that flow from religious convictions that other non-faith-based organizations have difficulty articulating.
A great part of CRS' operational advantage is our ability to engage an extensive network of local faith-based organizations, including local Catholic dioceses and parishes, as well as social service agencies, through which we carry out our work. We have seen that as a result of the FBCI, some of our local partners have greater access to funding, have increased dialogue with donors, and have formed other partnerships.
However, progress in this regard is threatened by broader changes in the U.S. Government approach to foreign assistance. We fear that it will be difficult to preserve a role for faith-based and community organizations in this changing context that appears to place a greater value on contracting and short-term deliverables over long-term, sustainable development.
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1. THE IMPACT OF THE FAITH-BASED INITIATIVE
We understand that the primary focus of the FBCI was to increase access to federal funding for faith-based groups that had not previously had access, and that its focus has been more domestic than international. Therefore, it is not surprising that there has been little or no growth in the CRS public resources portfolio that can be directly attributed to the FBCI. Grants are not offered to CRS because we are a faith-based organization. However, CRS has seen some expansion of opportunities and increased receptiveness of governmental actors, not only for CRS, but for other faith-based organizations as well.
CRS has been using U.S. taxpayer-provided resources in relief and development programs for more than 60 years. We work with a wide range of U.S. Government departments and agencies, including the Department of State, USAID (including Food for Peace and OFDA), USDA, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services and others.
We do not seek preferential treatment because we are a faith-based organization. We only want a level playing field. The merits of our programs and our stewardship of resources are sufficient to make us competitive. Our faith-based network of partners makes us a superior choice as a cooperating sponsor or grantee.
Despite the fact that larger, established faith-based organizations were not a primary target of this initiative, we have felt welcomed at high levels within the Administration, and we believe our input has been valued. For example, we have been able to present our perspectives on the importance of poverty alleviation in the context of the Millennium Challenge Account, where I serve on the Board of Directors. We have been able to meet and discuss issues with the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives as well as with officials in the faith-based initiative offices in various U.S. Government departments and agencies.
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We have seen greater sensitivity from the U.S. Government to the approaches of the faith-based community. Organizations such as CRS and others attempted to improve the terms under which we work for many years. Some changes were made grudgingly before the FBCI—such as lifting the informal ban on funding non-condom distributing organizations. We are happy to report that the US Government is open to a wide variety of effective and proven approaches to women's reproductive health and HIV and AIDS that center on combinations of nutrition, hygiene, health care, education and moral behavior.
2. FAITH-BASED PARTNERSHIPS IN AFRICA
For decades, CRS has sought to build the capacity of local organizations, faith-based and otherwise, to assist them in identifying and addressing their own needs. The work of CRS is grounded in Catholic Social Teaching, which stresses the dignity of the human person and the profound ties that unite all humanity. It also promotes the concept of subsidiarity, which holds that decision-making should not be centralized, but should flow down to the appropriate local level.
At the same time, CRS does represent fundamental American values. Americans expect the active involvement to the fullest extent of all recipients of our aid. This means that people are participants, not just beneficiaries or bystanders, in development and relief programs. It means that we must partner as equals with all the dignity afforded a true partner.
Let me briefly highlight how we work with the Catholic Church and other faith-based partners in Africa.
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The work of faith-based organizations like CRS goes far beyond implementing so many specific 2- or 3-year projects. On a visit this past April to Juba in southern Sudan, Vice President Salva Kiir told me how important it was to the people of south Sudan that CRS stayed with them to help them gain a right to self determination. We have been in Sudan and we will stay as long as we are needed.
CRS has supported the Catholic Bishops of the Democratic Republic of Congo in educating voters as to their voting rights and the need for them to participate in the ongoing electoral process in that high-potential but war-torn country.
In Benin, with support from a U.S. Department of Labor grant, we are working with the Church to address the problem of child trafficking. The trafficking project we have there has provided community outreach and support for vocational training for 10,000 trafficked and at-risk children and their families.
Finally with the support of CRS private funds and the President's AIDS initiative (PEPFAR) we are working through a variety of networks in Africa, including the faith-based networks, to provide (as of August 31, 2006) a total of 47,323 people living with HIV with life-preserving anti-retroviral drugs and another 100,401 people living with HIV with related medical care.
These examples underscore that one key to CRS success in promoting development and relief is forming partnerships with local organizations. These links provide continuity for development programs and promote greater effectiveness in aid implementation.
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3. THE CHALLENGE TO FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS
I fear that the positive potential for the FBCI to influence both the actors in foreign assistance and the programs being carried out may be overshadowed by recent changes in foreign assistance. I see a shift in U.S. foreign policy and overseas aid toward a narrow focus on security and anti-terrorism that could undermine the tenets of partnership and sustainable development.
The current State Department model stresses the 3–Ds: Diplomacy, Defense and Development. In principle, it is a solid model whose merits can and must be debated. In practice, what troubles me most at the outset is the lack of attention to our traditional core constituency: the poorest of the poor. The Foreign Assistance Framework, in its July 11 version at least, makes no mention at all of poverty or hunger. Instead, the overarching emphasis underpinning Transformational Diplomacy, the State Department's new philosophical foundation for foreign assistance, seems to be counter-terrorism. We have heard from our representative in Ethiopia that ''the number one priority for all U.S. Government programming in Ethiopia is counter-terrorism.'' Therefore, all USAID programs need to be justified in terms of working towards this goal. Where does such an approach leave the most destitute served by groups like the Missionaries of Charity? Where is the attention to alleviating poverty and addressing the root causes of hunger, which one could argue are significant contributing factors to instability and the conditions that foster conflict and terrorism?
This emphasis leaves CRS to wonder how we, as a faith-based organization, can find an appropriate place for ourselves and our partners in future foreign assistance efforts. We simply cannot sign onto an initiative that subsumes our mission as an agency serving extremely poor people in the developing world into a security paradigm.
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The U.S. Government's increasing preference for providing assistance through contracts focuses on the short-term results without supporting a long-term process of building up local organizations. These contracts or awards are often based on physical infrastructure built—such as wells dug, schools built or clinics supplied. What this approach does not measure is the impact on disease prevention, opportunities for girls in education, or indices of health promotion. For instance, a school feeding program does nothing to improve education if it is not linked to teacher training and compensation, water and sanitation at the school, curriculum improvement, parent-teacher associations and child de-worming. We see programs increasingly split into discreet contracts or having such a narrow focus and timeframe that will ultimately result in no sustainable change in people's lives. Unless U.S. government-supported programming takes a wider focus, a longer time frame and more people-centered approach, it will not be sustainable.
Moreover, we are increasingly forced to treat partners as if they are subcontractors. This goes against our nature. There are growing numbers of solicitations requiring U.S. Government approval of sub-recipients and ''fair and open competition'' for sub-recipient participation in receiving resources from the prime awardee. This requirement effectively undermines our long-term commitment to our community-based partners of all faiths, and potentially requires us to make our traditional Church partners compete against other faith communities.
To conclude, from CRS' perspective, the greatest impact of the FBCI has been increased sensitivities in U.S. Government agencies toward the issues and values espoused by faith-based organizations. In the broader context, CRS believes that the most important foreign aid issues are maintaining a focus on long-term development and ensuring that poverty reduction isn't sacrificed in the increasing emphasis on national security.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be glad to respond to any questions.
Mr. SMITH. Father Phillips.
STATEMENT OF THE REVEREND EDWARD PHILLIPS, CHAIRPERSON, EASTERN DEANERY COMMUNITY-BASED HEALTH CARE & AIDS RELIEF PROGRAM
Rev. PHILLIPS. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, first I would like to thank you for inviting me to attend this meeting and to tell you a story, not from a major donor or world league out of Washington or Baltimore, but out of the slums of the City of Nairobi, and give a different focus on what the U.S. Government is doing. I have a prepared statement which I have submitted and request to be put into the record.
Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered.
Rev. PHILLIPS. Thank you. I spent over 30 years living in Africa, and actually more of my biological life has been in Africa than still in the United States. Although most people say I still come from Boston, I never lost the accent.
Thirteen years ago we began in the city of Nairobi to set up an AIDS program in the slums on the eastern side of the city. It was supported by the late Cardinal Otunga, because we were seeing in the early 1990s many of our poor folks in the slums were sick and dying of AIDS. They weren't resourcing—people weren't talking about AIDS—they weren't resourcing health services of the government, and so we discussed, as a group of priests outside of the city, what we must do.
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So in 1993 we finally received some funding from two church-based organizations to try to respond through the communities and the slums, to reach out to people that are sick and dying with HIV/AIDS and also put into place prevention. As time went on and our program continued to develop, we started to seek out additional ways of getting funding.
And one of the things in the AIDS world, there is a word called ''stigma,'' and AIDS patients and AIDS families feel the sense of being stigmatized for others because they are HIV-positive and have AIDS. And I had felt the same form of stigmatism being directed toward me as a Catholic priest, running an AIDS program in the slums of the city of Nairobi. When the word was on the ground Catholics were not welcome at the table to seek out money if it was for AIDS, and the main player at that time with money was USAID—this was pre-PEPFAR—well known on the ground that Catholics are not welcome. So I go running around with my tin cup, begging people for money in the United States. I figure, where am I going to find my salaries for the next month? But the word was Catholics are not welcome in the AIDS field.
Then in 2002, the Center for Disease Control, who has a Nairobi office, had a different approach. They came to me, and they were setting up voluntary counseling and testing centers, and they started to look at the relationship of HIV and tuberculosis. And all they could offer was technical support to us, and every year, they had tried to find a little bit of money within the government grant and the National AIDS Control Program to allocate us some money for TB studies, and we did a pilot study on tuberculosis and delivery of services within the slums. From PEPFAR, I was able to get a direct cooperative agreement through the Center for Disease Control for a comprehensive AIDS care, TB care, counseling, and we began offering pediatrics care this year.
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Now, the strange dynamic is, for a person who is a Catholic priest—and Catholics weren't welcome at the table—the AIDS Relief Program is presently the Number two individual supplier of antiretroviral care in Kenya with PEPFAR. Eastern Deanery did the national study for testing and counseling in relationship to tuberculosis. And it is now the government policy, a faith-based organization that wasn't welcome at the table. The Eastern Deanery Program at the present time is working through Marquette University, the College of Nursing, who also had problems getting funding. We ran a national program for the upgrading of nurses and the HIV/AIDS scare, and actually we have developed a model for nurses, a model of antiretroviral care.
The same program is the present largest individual supplier of antiretroviral drugs in Nairobi Province, all to the poor and the slums in the City of Nairobi, and we are the Number 1 TB clinic in the city of Nairobi, as approved by the Kenyan Government. We test over 3,000 patients every month, and clients, through our VCT sites and through our diagnostic testing and counseling sites, and presently, we have over 700 children receiving comprehensive AIDS care, including antiretroviral care. At the present time, our total patient population is over 6,500 patients, all of this for someone who wasn't welcome at the table because we are faith-based, and we are Catholic. But PEPFAR and the CDC believed in us. Until this day, the CDC respects us. There is no pressure placed on us, on the Catholic traditions, as to what might be.
I work at the national level of the Episcopal Conference. I work at the Vatican. I am actually a pontifical advisor to the Vatican on health issues, and one of the things we find in the work in the Church around Africa, especially in Kenya, is the formation of young people. I think we all know, when were young, our parents told us ''no,'' but kids have to know the skills and how to negotiate relationships with other young people, and so we have done a lot of work on life skill development, the formation of young people so that they have the skills to help them to grow and develop.
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I think the Church has been hit over the head with what I think is one of the key things, which is positive formation of young people. And I have worked at the universities as a chaplain, at the same time running a program and a lecture at the University. I know the hurts of the young university students that they go through.
As we move forward I have some concerns, and these are economic concerns. Let's start with the Global Funds. The Chairman mentioned it. In January of this year, actually, I was in Geneva. I was invited to give a paper for the major Catholic donors around the world, and actually the people from the Global Fund came in, and they admitted between 4 to 6 percent of the Global Fund money is going to faith-based organizations. It is scandal, and they wipe it off. Today it is a country issue. We are sitting in Geneva. That is not our issue. I said, ''Come on. It is a scam. It is all part of the same system.''
I really believe that there is really a glass ceiling, and they don't want to look at it, and there is probably also issues of secularism that are up in it. I have actually prepared a paper for the Episcopal Conference in Kenya to try to even deal with the Kenyan Government. Because what happens is you put your proposal in; what you put in doesn't always come in the final agreement they put through because of the amount of changes that go on.
So how can you justify 4 to 6 percent, worldwide, of Global Fund money when, across Africa, church-based organizations are doing a phenomenal amount of work? It makes no sense, and no one wants to ask the question. So you know, there is some form of bigotry or elements of that in that, and I think that really has to be looked at.
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Secondly, I have heard a lot of discussions about how we are going to take PEPFAR money, and we are going to put it in the Global Fund. I have been overseas for over 30 years. I know the good of American politics and American foreign aid, and I know the bad of it.
Now, there is one thing. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, PEPFAR is one of the few times that I have seen the moneys really get down to folks. I mean, I am taking care of the poorest of the poor who don't even access health care, and you know, I am keeping them alive, and I am a huge supplier in the country. PEPFAR is doing that. It is what, with the American taxpayer when you go back to your constituency, you talk about. This time the money is going there. It is not going to the $500 hammers or the $700 toilet seats or, you know, X amount of money coming back to Washington.
So I think as a Government, as the U.