[As prepared]

Good Morning Everyone. Eid Mubarak. Just 2 weeks ago, I had the good fortune of attending an Iftar dinner in Cairo, so for me this is sort of full circle, and great to be here to celebrate the end of Ramadan with all of you.

I want to thank today's speakers, Ambassador Akbar Ahmed from American University, as well as USAID’s own Tom Staal, the Acting Administrator for the bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance. He’s leaving that position next week but he’s already completed more than 30 years of service with USAID in some of the toughest places around the world, so I want to thank you Tom, for your dedicated service and your trusted leadership, for all these different assignments. I also want to thank our USAID Muslim employee resource group for the tremendous support they give to all the Muslim team here at USAID. Jaheda Guliwala, our management bureau representative has done a fantastic job leading  the group, and we’re so glad to have her here with us today.

As you heard, this is the first time we have celebrated Eid-al-Fitr like this, and I want to thank all of you for joining us and making it so special. We have with us Ambassadors, colleagues from across the U.S. government, and valued partners from NGOs, think tanks, civil society, and communities all around the world. So thank you so much for being here, because for us, partnership is at the core of what we do. The partnership is really what we are doing across the whole agency, including with many of you. Just as we’re strengthened by the incredible diversity of the USAID staff, we’re strengthened and our work is strengthened by our partnership with all of you, with the diversity of partnerships we have with all of you. And we’re proud, very proud, to count faith based organizations and communities as part of that.

For decades, we have partnered with people of faith, to save lives after a disaster strikes, to eradicate diseases, to educate girls and boys, to promote the rights of women and minorities, and to help people feed their families. And that’s because our core values are often aligned. The holy month of Ramadan, as you know, honors the Muslim commitment to compassion, mercy, justice, and charity, and these are the same principles that guide much of our work across the globe and the american people's impulses that support our work, and we remain committed to partnering with Muslim communities and folks like you to put those values to work in service of the world's most vulnerable people. Now, this is a very challenging time, and one of the things that we’ve been striving to do better is to tell the story of that work, the stories of the incredible people with whom we work.

Sadly, at this time of great upheaval and violence, whether overseas or here domestically, when these long lasting conflicts are establishing dangerous new normals. It’s hard, when all those horrible things are going on around the world for good things to be noticed, but there are good things, many more good things than bad things going on all around the world as you know better than me. That’s why we’ve launched a new effort with all our offices across the Middle East and North Africa to show stories of inspiring people who are improving the lives of their families and neighbors and making their communities better places to live. You know, this is so important that people see alternative narratives and understand all the good that is going on so that they don’t get pessimistic about where the world is going. It could be a Palestinian entrepreneur or a community leader in Lebanon. In every place in the world, these people are practicing the values of compassion, mercy, justice, and charity. Even in the darkest moments and in the darkest places, there is hope.

I’d like to show you one of these stories, but before doing that I also wanted to do one other thank you which to one our foreign service nationals, in other words a local staff member at our West Bank Gaza office, who has played a huge role in getting this effort going, so we want to thank you, and I’m so glad that you could be here with us today. And so I will just end by repeating two things, to thank you again for your work, for your influence to improve lives, for your doing work in difficult environments, and embodying the shared values of your faith and all faiths. We are so grateful for your partnership. Thank you, Eid Mubarak, and now let’s see a story called “Let’s Bring a Chair”. Thank you.