White House Task Force on Poverty and Development

This week I was asked to serve on the White House Task Force on Poverty and Development, one of several taskforces created within the Whiote House Office on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. There will be conference calls every two weeks and a meeting in October. The first call was Thursday this week. It was quite interesting - the others on the committee are from big development and relief organizations (Bread for the World, World Vision, CRS, Interaction, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, etc), so it will be interesting to see what I can bring to the discussion. Our task is to proposed ways for the administration to work in partnership with organizaitons like ours to address poverty and development issues. I would love to think this through together to see what we want to emphasize. The taskforce will give us entre to policymakers in the White House and the rest of the Adminsitration - so we also should gather a list of people in this field that I should ask the committee to meet. My first thoughts are to talk about listening carefully to people on the ground in other countries and following their experience-based advice and basing development practice to reformed economic and ecological policy. Hmmmm. Lots to learn ...