Our upcoming Eyewitness installments will focus in part on the lives and work of USAID colleagues, highlighting the challenges and contributions of United States international development. Read their personal accounts of how they arrived at development work—often including service in the Peace Corps—their experiences around the globe, and their thoughts on what works—and doesn’t—in trying to make the most of U.S. assistance dollars to build sustainable global development.
William Stacey Rhodes
Interview covers: Occidental College, Johns Hopkins, long-term training: Terry Sanford School Duke University, Central America, Haiti, Morocco, Nepal, South Africa, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Peace Corps
“Finally, to get into the morality—or even ‘metaphysics’—of it all, for just a final minute; Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was yesterday. He gave many great speeches, but in one he says—if I can paraphrase it—something like, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” But he and others have pointed out that it doesn’t bend by itself. …It only bends from people who go out ‘into the arena’, and actually fight for what they believe is right. People have to bend it! We have had the chance to do that in our own American way, and to help those in poorer and tougher places to make great strides for themselves and their countrymen.”Julius E. Coles
Interview covers: Morehead College, Princeton, Peace Corps, Vietnam, Morocco, Liberia, Nepal, Swaziland, Senegal, Howard University Ralph Bunche Center, Africare
“Yes I think there is what they call donor fatigue in some countries, in some parts of the world. I think given the problems and the magnitude of the problems in the African continent, [and that is] to say that you have donor fatigue is to give up on 800 million people. I don’t think the world can do that.”