GHANA—In a remote village hours
from Tamale, USAID worker Valerie DeFillipo and her colleagues arrived to a
warm welcome from the small town’s 200 inhabitants. Villagers greeted the team
to show gratitude and support for a USAID-funded Planned Parenthood of Ghana
clinic, the village’s only source of medical care. Dozens of locals came to
hail the clinic as a fixture of community wellness and women’s empowerment and
health, by providing a
fusion of family planning and other education and health
services. Today, the small clinic continues to educate, heal and empower
community members.
USAID’s activities in isolated
communities such as the one DeFillipo visited challenge the notion that foreign
aid should be reserved for and has the greatest impact on governments and
large-scale programs. Of the agency’s 2,642 projects across more than 170 countries, many function in remote areas that have little or no infrastructure,
health facilities nor the human and financial basis to sustain economic
development.
