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mardi 21 septembre 2010

Kate Beale: USAID's congressional liaison on Haiti

The Partnership for Public Service
Monday, September 20, 2010; 7:18 PM
Four weeks after Kate Beale began her new job as a congressional liaison officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), disaster struck in Haiti.
In the aftermath of last January's 7.0-magnitude earthquake that claimed 230,000 lives and left 1.5 million people homeless, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah put the 30-year-old Beale in charge of handling the agency's congressional relations for all issues related to the relief and recovery for the devastated island country.
For the next seven weeks, Beale worked twelve or more hours a day, seven days a week with her colleagues from the USAID emergency center in Washington, D.C.
She responded to inquiries from members of Congress, led briefings on Capitol Hill and organized a series of outreach events, in congressional districts with large Haitian populations such as Brooklyn, N.Y., and Miami. The purpose of the outreach efforts was to engage members of the Haitian-American community by providing guidance on how they could contribute in the rebuilding effort.
According to her supervisor, Barbara Larkin, Beale's design of the conferences resulted in a creative and effective outreach strategy.
"Kate organized them, publicized them, learned about each audience in advance and then helped tailor the speakers' messages to the people who would be there," Larkin said. "She's very good at her job."
Beale's work with Congress also has paid dividends, according to Paul Weisenfeld, who is the coordinator for USAID's Haiti Task Team.
Weisenfeld said that without Beale's Capitol Hill experience—she worked for former Sen. Hillary Clinton for more than four years before coming to USAID—it "would have been impossible for us to maintain the kinds of relationships and get the support we need to do our jobs."
Part of Beale's role was participating in USAID's Haiti Response Management Team, an inter-agency task force that included representatives from the Departments of State, Defense, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services
Primarily, she supplied information and sought to build support in Congress for funding to help rebuild Haiti, a challenging task given the economic downturn, the burgeoning federal budget deficit and the reluctance of some members of Congress to spend money overseas.
Beale said she organized and participated in a number of congressional delegation trips to Haiti that gave congressional leaders a better understanding of the international effort and helped change minds. She said some members of Congress started out as skeptics, but ended up advocating for appropriations to support USAID's efforts after their visits to Haiti. As of August 31, U.S. humanitarian assistance to Haiti for earthquake relief totaled $1.1 billion.
The visits to Haiti were similarly transforming for Beale.
"When I set foot in Port-au-Prince, I was immediately energized by the resilience of the Haitian people and USAID's field staff," Beale said. "Despite nearly unimaginable constraints—mounds of rumble, lack of permanent shelter and reliable energy sources—the Haitians are taking deep pride in re-building their nation back stronger and it inspires me to do more in Washington with Capitol Hill."
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Beale said she is firmly committed to public service, and now more than ever convinced of the significance of the USAID mission.
"What USAID does is so important, because we're such a wealthy nation—and not just economically," she said. "It's important for us to share with other countries, as well as to learn from them how to be a better neighbor. The process makes us stronger and makes our friends and allies that much stronger."
This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Visit www.ourpublicservice for more about the organization's work to recognize the men and women who serve our nation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092005478.html?sub=AR

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