The urgent matter now is for Secretary Rubio’s team to facilitate USAID’s metamorphosis into a functioning entity whose people believe that promoting democracy abroad and doing good in the world go hand and hand. And an effective pro-democracy project promoting U.S. interests abroad need not cost millions of taxpayer dollars.
I should know. I was a USAID grant recipient in Colombia.
Thanks to support from American organizations including USAID, I was able to build playgrounds in remote rural villages where young people were at risk for recruitment by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). I worked mostly in Tolima, the departamento or “state” in which the FARC was formed in 1964. And like all Marxist guerillas in Latin America, the FARC saw the United States as the enemy.
If I had settled on building playgrounds for the sake of building playgrounds, I would have probably been seen as a Yanqui interloper whose efforts would have had little lasting impact. Instead of merely gifting something new, I decided to show the kids what they already had: their democratic rights as young citizens of a republic… and hopes for an existence unmarred by guerilla violence.
So I decided to build “playground projects” in which young people were required to use the democratic process to determine where the playground should be built and why. The process would begin with a tour of candidate sites pre-approved by the local mayor, followed by public debate among young people representing each site before taking a vote to determine the winning location of the new playground.
Borrowing my high school alma mater’s motto Non Sibi—not for self—I called the playgrounds “Non Sibi playgrounds. The kids who participated became members of the “Non Sibi Team.”
The first Non Sibi playground project I completed was in a remote mountain village in northern Tolima called Villahermosa. I funded the first project myself before receiving support from entities like Spirit of America and the International Organization for Migration.
After completing several projects throughout Colombia, working with the Non Sibi team year after year, I met with USAID officers interested in supporting the program. They seemed shocked to hear that the cost for three Non Sibi playground projects, including construction, transportation, and room and board for the kids, was less than $73,000—a drop in the bucket compared to the high six-figure amounts quoted for other USAID initiatives in-country. USAID eventually referred me to a USAID subcontractor whose staff approved funding for three playgrounds.
Between 2009 and 2015, my foundation facilitated 12 playground projects. The FARC never once sabotaged a project, or to my knowledge, threatened any of the young participants.
While I cannot compare my small foundation to the larger NGOs that have bettered thousands of lives, I can attest to how a relatively small amount of U.S. taxpayer dollars funding a small public diplomacy endeavor made a lasting impact on a group of young Colombians who applied democratic principles to bettering their communities.
Promoting democracy where it is threatened should continue to be a foreign policy priority and it does not need to cost a lot. Secretary Rubio’s team must rebuild a functioning foreign aid entity staffed by people who love our nation and know it to be a powerful force for good.
USAID may be gone, but the mission remains.