2009 Annual Report: Letter from the President

Letter from the President

Maximizing Our Engagement During Difficult Times

Our community is no stranger to new challenges. Regardless of programmatic focus, InterAction members share a core commitment to helping communities around the world tackle the obstacles to shaping a vibrant, equitable and sustainable future. Confronting adversity and managing uncertainty is precisely where we excel.

The past year was one of unprecedented turmoil for many in our coalition. The global financial crisis has caused severe losses in resources and capacity throughout the NGO community, with worrisome implications for our collective ability to carry out vital work at a time of increased need. But paralleling these disruptions are the great gains we have realized through engaging in and influencing the broader dialogue on meaningful development and relief strategy. Navigating these juxtaposed landscapes is our new challenge.

By convening our members to provide substantive input into two major reform initiatives of the Obama administration—the White House Presidential Study Directive and the State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review—InterAction has played a prominent role in processes that could change the direction of U.S. foreign assistance. Our participation as thought leaders in high-level policy discussions has heightened the U.S. government’s recognition of the NGO community as a key development actor.

We also contributed positively to these discussions in our follow-up to the successful Foreign Assistance Briefing Book, a collection on critical development and humanitarian issues submitted to the incoming administration and Congress. The one-year progress report gauged the status of our community’s recommended actions and identified current opportunities for improvements in such crucial areas as the limits to development effectiveness posed by the focus on security in Afghanistan.

We have gained influence at the international level as well, by mobilizing our members and working with partners to make civil society a visible and coordinated presence at the G8, G20 and other international meetings, including the December climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. InterAction’s NGO Hub at the October G20 summit in Pittsburgh provided a gathering place with wired workspaces to enable NGOs from around the world to send out a unified message and keep our leaders’ focus on the world’s poor.

The InterAction community faces distressing constrictions just as we find new doors opening for us. I am confident that our demonstrated resilience and our commitment to cooperating across diverse sectors will continue to carry us forward and fortify our efforts to support people-centered development and the indispensable contributions of our members.

Samuel A. Worthington
President and CEO, InterAction

(Photo: Geoff Oliver Bugbee)