ourselves. at the same time, and carrie referenced this quite specifically, again, the folks in congress who have to face the voters every two or six years, you know, the folks -- elizabeth doesn't get a vote. and the people who get a vote are the people who are employed when their rice is sold in countries that already produce rice, or are sold when we pay a 20% premium to ship relief supplies on a u.s. airline. or are employed when 40, 50% of an aid contract in afghanistan goes to washington-based contractors, and if that sounds like the pentagon to you, it should. and this is interesting as there is increased pressure on the budget, many of you that love the $1,000 toilet seats are moving into the economic realm. those are two really big sets of

problems. what we all have to be honest about, and when we get into this aid conversation, it's really easy to get mad about conservatives are racist and they hate africans and whatever, but we do have an aids structure in the u.s. that was developed in the 1950s and '60s for a cold war world and a world where the gap between the northern countries giving the aid and the southern countries receiving it was enormous. and, you know, as carrie said, when it comes cell phones, you encounter better technology in other worlds than here, and there are major centers of aid giving not connected to the u.s. government, both public entities, and bill gates gives more money to africa every year than quite a few wealthy

countries do. when we were working on actually getting anti-retroviles to africa, and it was a nonprofit that bono started. he said if coca-cola can deliver coca-cola all over the country, there's no reason we can't deliver chilled vials all over the country. well, and this is already happening on the ground. again, some of it is not good what is happening on the ground, but our thinking about aid and our talking about it has to take that into account. so i promised that mine would be the explicit and bomb-throwing segment of the panel, and i will now turn it over to judith to talk about the outside the u.s. perspective. [ applause ] >> thank you very much, heather. judith. >> thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you this afternoon. it's always a privilege to be at

the world conference of affairs. i will address this as a u.s. citizen. i thought i would make remarks in response to the discussion that carrie and healther mentioned -- by the way, i think it's absolutely wonderful that we have three women on the panel talking about it. it also demonstrates this is an area where certainly for those who are students in the audience and considering career paths, we find there are many, many women should have taken strong leadership roles in the field and i ask that you to consider walking in their footsteps. carrie mentioned the conundrum of u.s. sourcing for aid, raw materials, whether it's food aid or relief but it's how aid is delivered. heather mentioned the aid industrial complex which is what we call in washington the beltway bandits. this is u.s. contractors that

implement aid programs on the ground and in many cases they are extremely large and important actors in providing foreign assistance. i think that there isn't -- when we talk about aid effectiveness, we have to be really honest about the fact that the u.s. idea is transparent in the sense of most of the foreign assistance budget is going to u.s. contractors. i think that's kind of a dirty little secret. it's a way that you can kind of promote and support u.s. business interests. it's also a way that some other countries have done this, and whether it's through peace corps or other mechanisms to get young people exposed to career possibilities or prospects, and that's the part is that not discussed but it's part of the conversation. i will focus most of my remarks on latin american which is the

region i worked primarily in my career. when we think about something about the south com, it provides humanitarian assistance in the areas of health. this is something that has been promoted for several years now. the role of military and contractors providing aid cannot be de-linked. it's one of the challenges we face from the public perspective. i have worked many years in grassroots approaches. i was trained looking at grassroots approaches, actually northeast of brazil and worked closely with a mentor that followed albert hersberg that looked at local people and communities. i worked over ten years in a career with grassroots involvement. i know that many of you go to developing countries and many have nonprofits and are involved in faith-based work or have your own institutions that are

leading or running, and i think one of the challenges that we face is how to take some of the local initiatives and the grassroots approaches and really scale them up. i think that there's an urgency to do that scaling up for many reasons. we know governments often have a hard time with equity questions. i work extensively on looking at intkeupblg tphus countries, and these are the areas that are often most difficult to target. i think one of the goals should always be to try to support one of the goals. so that's one of the things that i have been struggling with in my career. i made a transition from

grassroots approaches to more international approaches and looking at approaches that can be taken on by governments and taken to scale. and there's a reason this is important in latin american. latin america is doing very well right now. it's one of the few reasons that is growing and weathered the economic storm and created innovative policy models. i want to give you one example. that's brazil. brazil is the only brick that has decreased in equality over the past five years. many of you may be familiar with

u the brazil traditional cash tran fer program. in brazil, it started out as a program, and it's now grown significantly. they have launched a new component of it that. behind the program it's to target the poorest of the poor in the country. so the previous conditional cash transfer programs essentially took people who are very -- who are lower income and moved many of them into the middle class. interestingly, when we think about development, out comes many of the middle class, these newly middle class brazilians. their first investment items, they are investing first in education for their children and then second they are investing in personal computers for education for their children. when you are giving people an

opportunity to access financial resources they are prioritizing, and prioritizing in the future generation. and brazil had a tremendous need for professionals. many individuals are making investment as well as the government making investments in human capital. now the conditional cash transfer program and there's one in mexico, and it's actually been modeled in some communities here in the united states. i know at one point chicago was looking at modeling conditional cash transfers and new york as well. especially if students participated and attended schools families would receive a small subsidy to reward that good behavior. we see it in panama and other places. it's a direct cash transfer from government to low income communities.

what is exciting is it's looking at the poorest of the poor. people who may not be registered for government services and it's providing an incentive for the government to go out and idea those individuals. and to idea them in creative ways that perhaps goes beyond the traditional mechanisms for traditional cash transfer, which include health care. if you go to the doctor on a regular basis and if your children go to school you could receive food subsidies. and how do you sweeten that basket of goods so you are not changing community diets or values or principles. i think one of the main areas -- that's kind of an example of public aid. and public aid for the u.s. and latin america has traditionally been driven by goals of new neighbor policy. good neighbor policy combined with good citizen policy. i would argue -- i am speaking as a u.s. citizen, our foreign policy has been driven by

citizen security in the area of tphaur koe trafficking. the reason i say that, if you look at the discussions around aid, again we talk briefly about south com, and if you are thinking about foreign aid and you are thinking about how the u.s. engages latin american countries, it's often the military, and visa srae the military, and looking at immigration and looking at how you control borders and how do you control drug trafficking. and one of the missed opportunities in that is ultimately a lot of that discussion is based around a market and a demand for a product here in the united states and it's inefficient to deal with that demand only by engaging latin america. the trafficking problem has gone from the south and getting

closer to the north and the more military aid and assistance that you poor into one country, you push the bubble and it goes somewhere else. and there is another area of aid that i think is very, very new. it's the idea of strategic partnerships and assistance. i look at brazil as a wonderful example of that. i would love to hear about a conversation in the united states about how to eliminate poverty in our country. i think they are bold plans and models. i don't see the dichotomy between doing something bold like that, like eliminating poverty and valuing and recognizing local principles and practices. i see these as two things that have to go together. my family has been involved in community activities in the united states, and my family said why are you working overseas because there are problems here in the united states, and why do you have to

go somewhere else? it's precisely the fact that i understand the situation and the situation of the grassroots perspective in the united states that i can use that lens to look at national policy decisions and look at international policy decisions, and understand kind of more or less intuitively whether they are going to work or not. again, we don't have to see these two as being mutually exclusive. and this is a story of a movement that comes out of latin america that doesn't get a lot of discussion, but it's relevant to the debates in global warming, and countries like columbia, and in brazil. these are people who are recyclers, and argentina, they go into trash dumps to recycle materials. what they are picking is not trash. it's valuable resources that can be reused. as many of you know or should know that one of the wealthiest

women in china deals in recycle aluminum. it's commodity products these individuals are able to take from the trash. the movements that are the strongest at this moment in time are in latin america. they have been able to convene and work with local recyclers and work in places like india, and china and throughout all of africa to give value to this type of thing. and the biggest thing about recycling, there's a huge policy dimension to it. how do cities and municipalities decide to manage these. if they manage these through local cooperatives of recyclers, they are getting a service and providing a service. they are also providing a

service that generally they are not getting paid for. so instead of going with a large major international waste firm you can go with a local firm and create tremendous benefits for your own community and refuse those materials. when you think about the idea of public private partnership of grassroots interacting with government, i encourage you to look at what is happening with the recycler movements. in brazil, you have legislation that supports the dialogue. and how to create consciousness throughout the communities, so they can produce higher quality and recycled materials that leads to higher incomes for lower income people. when we are talking about higher incomes, we are talking about people that earn wages living

off of recycled materials. these are jobs that are somewhat messy, but often what happens is there are opportunities for their children to scale up and look at professional opportunities in the recycling field as well. this is one of the many, many examples that i encourage us to look at from latin america and from the developing world as the whole, and i think aid is a two-way street and we have an awful lot to learn from our neighbors to the south. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, judith. so now we come to the point of the program where we invite the audience to ask questions of the panelists. and we have about 30 minutes, because this panel ends at 11:50. i understand we are encouraged to leave the premises at about that time.

question? yes, sir. do you have -- sorry. >> do i have to wait for the microphone? >> it's right above you. >> oh, there it is. the previous panel was on global warming, and so i want to know if there is a way to avoid this being a zero sum gain? you talked about development and i am very well aware of the fact that in pakistan, there is talk about putting in a huge dam that may raise carbon dioxide levels, so is there a way to not contribute to what the previous panel spent a lot of time on. >> did everybody hear the question? >> no. >> the question has to do with

global warming. is there a way to sustain economic growth and not contribute to the problem of global warming? is that fair? okay. >> i just had a conversation with an environmentalist a week ago and there was a fascinating new model to look at pine rezins actually in mexico and other parts of latin america as a sustainable source. one of the things that i thought was very wise and i think i heard it from individuals from the environmental movement, if it's between feeding your family and a tree the tree always

loses. and i think we are trying to create opportunities that are sustainable where communities have adequate opportunities to make good decisions. i think understanding and giving a financial value to biodiversity, and to the natural resources of the country is necessary. it's becoming popular, but it's necessary and needed. the reason in a place like latin america where i work, you have some of the richest biodiversity in the world. and communities have done a great job, and they understand how you need to protect the resources. but if push comes to shove, and communities don't have a way to eat, you are looking at some

real significant challenges to the environment and specifically to biodiversity. you are bringing up the whole energy and resource issue in the region. i think we need to be much more conscience about our consepltion. i think alternative energy is not enough. we need to think about decentralized off the grid approaches to energy provision. whether it's a very small scale through soler and other communities and sustainable mechanisms and if not the energy demands are tremendous. we know as more and more people get access to cell phone technology, we need to plug in and have more and more sources of energy. i have seen some innovations in haiti that are fantastic. it started before the earthquake. it has taken off now. these are young guys who would have been gang members actually if they had not gotten together and did productive activities. they created backpacks with solar panels that are locally produced in haiti so kids with power up light sources so they can study at night.

they are being used for streetlights, and much of haiti is being provided through solar packs. it's easy technology that would maybe decrease the energy demands in the region where we work in the developing word. we ourselves -- what happens when your cell phone goes down? it's like your life is over. we have to talk about efficient energy and talk about scientific and technological solutions to contain the energy consumption. >> that's a great answer. the only thing i would reinforce, the economic growth model that our country pursued with increasing wealth and what have you is actually the biggest gains are by adjusting our own lifestyle. i think that's what we really have to be looking at.

>> and coming to the zero sum question, i think you really get in trouble if you frame this as a zero sum debate, because then what you get is quite legitimate push back saying, well, you know, of course we are going to have cell phones and of course we are going to build roads and dams if we need energy. and to understood that, there is going to have to be -- there is no getting around progress from the developed countries on climate change. i think your comment about choosing between the family and tree, that's true at a national level as well, and that has nothing to do with rich country or poor country. it has to do is there a bigger incentive than to provide electricity from a dam and if you can't provide one then you are going to have a dam. and that's a basic sort of question about how willing we are as a global community to deal with climate in a way that changes the incentives and that really has very little to do with how developed or undeveloped you are. >> okay. next question. yes?

>> is this loud enough? oh. >> i will repeat it for you after you are done. >> i am very proal truism, and stories like elizabeth's are important, but i think we should treat the symptoms rather than the cause. >> everybody hear the question? the question is essentially, does foreign aid essentially treat the symptom rather than the cause? is that fair? okay. >> i mean, i think that there is a lot of validity to what you are saying. we try to treat the symptoms rather than the cause, but there's something we need to understand, the root causes of some of the issues, gender inequality, for example. so i see in just -- you know, the past couple of years a lot more focus on addressing some of the root causes. as some of the developing countries gain leadership and take ownership for their own problems, there's a lot more focus on the root causes than we have seen in the past than when donors really drove the aid agenda. >> so judith's analogy to

development in this country is a great one. while you want to be conscious of the root causes and thinking about what you can do about them, in many ways your best long-term solution is empowering folks to go out and solve their own root causes. this is where we completely lose the string of. how do you help people empower themselves? basic education and basic health, and getting rid of conflict in their societies. and why do we care whether one person in zambia has a healthy baby or not? that's a child that has an opportunity to go after the root problems. of his or her choice. but we very often forget to make that link about why it's worth -- why it's worth putting

band-aids on gaping wounds. >> i think also if you look at some of the development literature in terms of what motivates communities, often you'll see it's kind of a combination of a crisis that will move local communities. and kind of a couple of inspired actors and kind of good political conditions or some openings, and so i think this notion of kind of root cause to some extent, you can almost -- i mean, it sounds terrible to say, but there are many reasons why there is inequality. there are many reasons why there is poverty. you can address multiple root causes, and maybe through getting rid of the symptoms. we talk about aids and i think cynically if we just gave all of the money that we are spending in foreign assistance to low income communities, what would happen. giving money for training individuals, i think it could be a really revolutionizing idea to get money into the hands of low income people, to some extent is

yes, dealing with the symptoms, but to some extent the cash transfers are an example of by encouraging healthy behavior and people to be responsible for themselves you do get the money into their hands and they have proven to be very responsible about how they use the money, and part of the reason for that is we understand looking at the role of woman in communities, you give those conditional cash transfers to women and they make sure their families are taken care of. >> research has shown the most effective interventions are -- if you want to identify one thing, it would be educating young girls. [ applause ]

>> yes, ma'am. >> the other day i heard a program where a man was discussing -- i think he called it population growth literacy. he talked about brazil, actually, trying to do this literacy and has had some progress with it. i remember, of course, from the '60s there was a whole population growth, and it blew up in our faces because it seemed like it was repressive from our point. i wondered what your thoughts were on that? >> so the question has to do with what are the panel's thoughts on population growth literacy with respect to growth? >> i think carrie's last point was relevant to this. when women are given access to education, and population declines. and it's just -- it's happened everywhere. it's just kind of a fact. so i think population growth literacy is a really interesting

concept, but i think it has an awful lot to do with gender empowerment of women, because when women are empowered you have control of fertility. the example of elizabeth, she went out and took control of her health care. these are decisions that women need to be empowered to make. and ultimately, fertility is very much in the realms of the control of women. >> now that you said that, i want to come back to something judith said at the beginning of her remarks about gender and this panel. i wanted to invite the room to take a moment and look around at each other. >> it's mostly women. >> and this is my fifth panel so far at this conference. because my day job is mostly to do with quote unquote hard national security, i spoke to a panel on turkey and spoke on the panel on nuclear weapons, and this is the only panel that i am on with two other women, and this is the only panel i have been on with this many woman in

the audience, and it tracks with what judith said as this as a career field, and that's wonderful and terrific and leading to wonderful things and understanding the empowerment of women in every area you could name, but what that means is the national security field looks like it did 20 years ago. it's much better. i would not have been running a nonprofit 20 years ago. we have four-star women generals now. but when we talk about why there is not money for aid and you have a fight within an administration, who are the reporters that cover the issues, and this divide is mirrored in academia. and so i would challenge those of you who are young and who care about these issues that this field is not the only place you can work on them, and that it's actually critically important that we don't settle into some kind of unofficial gender where men make more and women clean up afterwards.