A Visit from Hillary

The Secretary of State passed through this morning on her way to Phuket to attend a foreign ministers' meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), so a few of us went over to listen to her speech to the Embassy community. The speech was only about ten minutes long, but she mentioned USAID three times, State Department twice, and Defence once. We thought that was a pretty good sign.



Update: In Phuket, Secretary Clinton announced, "We [the Obama Administration] have asked Congress for a sevenfold increase in our USAID climate change funding for this region and plan to launch a new regional climate change initiative to support research and boost investment in innovative climate change development solutions for Asia and Southeast Asia." That will all be in our offices here in Bangkok, so if Congress funds the Administration's request, it sounds like we'll have some exciting new work to do over the next few years.

Further Update: Just to be clear, we don't mean to denigrate our colleagues at State and Defence. It's just that USAID is so much smaller than those two departments, so it's nice to get a little love from the Secretary of State in a speech delivered to one of the largest U.S. Embassies in the world.

Further Further Update: We have it on very good authority that during her meetings at the ASEAN foreign ministers' summit in Phuket, the Secretary mentioned one of Jennifer's programs by name, and several of the ministers from other attending countries spoke highly of it, as well. It's called the ASEAN Development Vision to Advance National Cooperation and Economic Integration, or ADVANCE. So, between the visit of President Bush and the First Lady last August, when they spent a lot of time with USAID in Bangkok, and the Secretary of State's visit this week, we're feeling a lot of love from Washington here at USAID/RDMA.

Disclaimer: As always, Patrick and Jennifer's views are their own and do not reflect the official opinions or policies of USAID or the U.S. Government.