Thank you, State Secretary Silberhorn, for the kind introduction.

Hello everyone. I’m very pleased to be here today on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to participate in and support the launch of the International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development (PaRD).   As one of my colleagues at USAID asked upon hearing about PaRD, “how is it that this doesn’t exist already?” As a result, we are grateful for Germany’s leadership in organizing it.

I would like to make a few comments that touch on this launch and why USAID is supportive of the partnership.

For our part, USAID is no stranger to working with faith-based organizations. Since USAID’s creation in 1961, by President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president in U.S. history, we have engaged with religious leaders and institutions to end extreme poverty, respond to human suffering and as, President Kennedy said, “to establish the principle that all the people are entitled to a decent way of life.”   As State Secretary Silberhorn also said, with 84 percent of people around the world identifying with a religious group, it is impossible to be effective in the world without strong partnerships with faith-based groups and religious leaders.

Over these 55 years, we have learned a bit about how to do this.  I would like to describe our two key principles.

The first principle is that we must, and do, ground the work of faith-based engagement into the normal operations of the Agency.  If we do not, attempts to partner together can be a side show, not part of the main event.

In operating that way, we have clear regulations that faith-based organizations must be allowed to compete on a level playing field with others groups.  And faith-based groups are significant partners. Over the past three years, Catholic Relief Services, for example, has done more than $740 million of work with us.

Another component to implementing this approach is that we have a National Strategy on Integrating Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement Into US Foreign Policy, issued by the Obama Administration, that calls for engaging religious actors and institutions in three priority issue areas: 1) promoting sustainable development and more effective humanitarian assistance; 2) advancing pluralism and human rights, including the protection of religious freedom; and 3) preventing, mitigating, and resolving violent conflict and contributing to local and regional stability & security.

And the final piece of this engagement effort is structural, USAID has a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives that works with the entire Agency to leverage the best partnerships possible with the faith-based organizations.

Our second principle is that our work with faith-based groups, like our work with all of our partners, must be about achieving big outcomes.  Like our colleagues here in Germany, other countries, and at the World Bank and the United Nations, we are working on 17 really big things:  we’ve committed to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.  So, for example, in his final State of the Union Address last month, President Obama declared we can and will end the scourge of malaria.  Saving the lives of millions of children and mothers each year is another top priority in global health. And, with our Feed the Future initiative, we have committed to reach millions of farmers and others to increase agricultural production, and address the plight of the over 800 million people who face chronic hunger globally. In education, it is impossible to work on getting the 55 million children not in school into school without working with faith-based organizations who in countries such as Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo run the largest school systems in those countries.

We ask our faith-based partners and religious leaders to join in these efforts. I hope that PaRD will do so as well.

In our view, working with faith and community groups must always be about the outcomes we seek.  It must not ever be just an end in and of itself.  There is too much to do for that.  

With the creation of the International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development (PaRD), we see bilateral donors, multilateral organizations, and other development partners creating a structure that can last, and a platform on which we can build to address such large challenges.

USAID shares PaRD’s commitment to effectively work with faith-based organizations to build new partnerships.

I am here today to stand with you to support this effort and to state our intention to be a core PaRD member, to reach our joint mission of ending extreme poverty. We look forward to working with all of you. Thank you.