In the 1960s, U.S. foreign aid comprised 70% of developing countries’ capital flow. Today, development assistance is less than 15% due to increased trade, investment, and private capital. With less resources and new challenges sweeping our planet, government needs to think differently about problem solving.
In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton launched the Global Partnership Initiative, promoting a new generation of public-private partnerships to strengthen foreign policy, maximize foreign aid impact, and enhance collaboration to solve problems. This collective action has inspired innovating new approaches to diplomacy and development.
The power of partnerships allows us to go the distance and accomplish far more together than we could apart. As a doorway for collaboration at the State Department, Global Partnership Initiative serves three key roles.
GPI has created a new model for global partnership and collaboration.
Nearly half of the people in the world rely on toxic-emitting stoves and open fires to cook their meals each day, resulting in four million deaths annually. But thanks to the development of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and their creation of a cost-effective, clean cookstove market, millions of families will be able to adopt life-saving, eco-friendly cooking solutions.
With the Middle East and North Africa experiencing the world’s highest youth unemployment rate, sustaining an effective diplomacy and development strategy is a critical challenge. To help reverse the situation and strengthen links to the United States, Partners for a New Beginning (PNB) was kick-started to advance education, enhance employment opportunities, foster science and technology, and catalyze exchanges with local communities through programs and partnerships. Talk about a worthy investment!
America is home to more immigrants than any other nation, sending billions of remittances annually to their families in developing countries. Yet, this global diaspora community as cultural and commercial ambassadors has largely been untapped. Unleashing this potential, the International Diaspora Engagement Alliance (IdEA) was created to harness these global connections to help improve lives in countries of origin and bridge understanding between nations.
ENGAGEMENT METHODS: Entrepreneurship, innovation, and giving
As the population expands and resources become more constrained, economic growth around the world will be limited. To ensure a sustainable, prosperous future and tap new opportunities, the initiative for Accelerating Market-Driven Partnerships (AMP) was launched as a collaboration platform to source business solutions that tackle social and environmental problems. The pilot program kicks off in Brazil and is focused on building sustainable cities and new recycling solutions.
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GPI’s innovative partnership approach has been so successful, it is being replicated throughout the State Department and officially institutionalized.
Through public-private partnerships, we have fundamentally changed the way the State Department conducts diplomacy and development and inspired meaningful innovations that promote prosperity around the globe.
