March 1, 2019
InterAction
Washington, DC

ADMINISTRATOR GREEN: Well, thank you, and it's good to be with all of you. And you can hear -- don't worry, I feel much worse than I sound.

Two trips to Colombia in five days will do that to you. But, it's great to be with all of you. Obviously, I have been a member of InterAction, and so it's great to be among friends. And I have enormous respect for InterAction, and also each of you individually, and what it is that you do.

You won't hear me use the term "public-private partnership" here today for lots of reasons. But one of them is that it sort of denotes to me a separation, and I don't view it that way. But we're all in this together quite literally. And the only way that we succeed in this community is if we are working closer (inaudible) passion.

In terms of what underlies our approach to things, for me, it's like, for all of you, it's a very personal experience. And I've lived in Africa a couple of times in my life, and 30 years ago, and we've lived there (inaudible) now. My wife and I were volunteer teachers in East Africa, and grassroots level, had no electricity, had running water, but couldn't use (inaudible) kept breaking down. And I had one wind-up telephone (inaudible) anticipating the worst.

But I was always -- no matter where I went, no matter what I saw, I was struck by human dignity and the innate desire of every human being, every family, every community, and it goes up, to want to lead him or herself and to provide for a brighter future.

And so what our approach is all about is trying to help our partners get there. So, everything that we do, is fostering this notion of self-reliance. You know, I believe in what we do. I wish it weren't necessary. I think we all feel that way. So, the purpose of foreign assistance is to end the need for its existence. Now, sadly, I suspect we'll have a lot to do for quite some time to come, but we'll always be pushing in that direction.

Now, what that means for what we're talking about today, I think, is, again, I want us to be true partners and not partners in the way that we have used it before. So, we're still going to be doing traditional cooperative agreements and contracts. It's bread and butter. But, what we're really interested in is collaboration; it's co-design, co-creation, co-financing. It is quite literally coming together as the -- as the public side, we'll have resources that have been generously allocated to us by members of Congress and the administration. And we want to come to you and say, "This is what the broader mission is. What are your ideas? What are your best efforts? How do you think we might be able to get there?"

The next part of all of this that I think is key, is we recognize that in order for that to work, we need to reshape ourselves such that we are effective collaborators, that we do this in an efficient way, in an effective way, breaking down some of the process bureaucracies that aren't necessary and don't add to the value at the end.

And then finally, one of the principles, or one of the elements, one of the characteristics that makes the American approach to development and foreign assistance so special is the innovation and ingenuity that's in our DNA. It is there. That's who we are as Americans. We want to tap into that in projecting our development, in our foreign assistance.

And so we constantly want to check ourselves and incentivize the kinds of reforms and technologies. And it isn't even cutting-edge technology, it's most often simply a new application of what is traditional technology or existing technology. So those are the basic precepts, and all of it coming back to the idea of helping, rather than a handout, helping others to lead themselves.