Oriana Cruz Echeverria ’21

Inter-American Foundation, Washington, DC

The 2019 IAF Summer Interns.

I had the opportunity of interning at the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) this summer—an independent U.S. government agency that promotes economic and social development in Latin America and the Caribbean by awarding grants to grassroots organizations with the most innovative self-help projects. IAF promotes partnerships among their grantees and other community organizations, local governments, and international and national businesses. As an independent agency, the IAF is managed by a board of directors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Congress awards the IAF budget annually which they then distribute to grantees. Part of what makes this foundation unique compared to other grant giving development organizations is that the IAF requires its grantees to commit to counterpart which means invest their own resources to launch their program. In this way it is not just the IAF contributing but also the grassroots organization having a stake in the project maximizing the likelihood of its success.

I had the wonderful opportunity of talking to and working with the entire office, however, most of my work was with the Programs team who are in charge of managing the IAF’s relationships with the grantees and ensuring the success of their programs. Additionally, the agency is celebrating its 50 year anniversary, and as such, the IAF is launching a series of informational campaigns for the public and its board of directors to better understand the importance of its work and where it is going.

I worked closely with the grants committee managing a list of the most emblematic grantees throughout the decades to have not only as a database but also to publish on their website. My first task was to help compile all the different reports and articles for each of the 189 emblematic grants selected by the committee. By doing this I helped the grants committee locate important information for a variety of campaigns. In fact, I was able to use this database to write a memo investigating the IAF’s work on sustainable agriculture throughout the decades.

This memo was incredibly important considering agriculture is the IAF’s largest program area with around 40% of all of the grantees funded focused on agriculture projects. Unlike other grant giving organizations who only recently began supporting organic or sustainable agriculture, the IAF has been supporting these environmental initiatives since the 60s. I went through the 189 emblematic grantees determining which ones had an agriculture component. Eventually I compiled a new database of all of the emblematic sustainable agriculture grantees with historical research of the projects and more recent information about the impact that the grantee has had on their region, their country, and their present work. I compiled this work into a 20-page report with both written descriptions of patterns 
I found in sustainable agriculture per decade as well as a series of graphs and charts putting this work into a larger context. This work although very tedious at first is tremendously important for the IAF to better understand the impact that their grant making is having in Latin America and the Caribbean over time. This will allow them to also guide their work in the future so that they can direct resources and support ideas that are better in line with their mission.

I also worked on Community Asset Mobilization (CAM) projects. CAM is a relatively new methodology for sustainable development and a new program area for the IAF. This methodology focuses on working with the communities based on what their strengths are and organizing them in order to best develop their region. The IAF does this by funding local or regional grant giving organizations who are able to fund local community organizations in smaller amounts something that the IAF is unable to do directly given their large budget. Having had the opportunity to learn about this methodology and the work that the IAF has done, I was first assigned to update the database of all the CAM projects from 2015 to the present. After doing this my supervisor wanted me to focus on one specific area of grant giving: grantee counterpart. The IAF only has an estimate of how much the grantee commits from the initial grant agreement but they have not been able to assess exactly how much they actually end up committing. Thus, I had the task of looking through final audits and final grantee reports to determine as best as I could what each grantee actually committed for a representative sample of CAM projects. I then created a list of the most successful grantees committing more than what they originally committed to, and a list of those which were least successful.

This experience has been incredibly eye-opening for me in that I learned so much about the world of 
international development and also some of the challenges working in a field with so much bureaucracy. 
I have realized through talking to so many of my supervisors that this field might not be for me. However, 
I walk away with more training working with data, research, and analysis, which are skills that I know will be useful in whatever field I chose. I am grateful for such a unique experience and I would like to thank the ’68 Center for Career Exploration and the Estate of George Mead for this opportunity. Thank you for allowing me to immerse myself in a summer of experience and invaluable knowledge.