CELEBRATION OF EXCELLENCE
In this section:
Red Sea Protection Recognized
Komich’s Work in Mali Lauded
El Salvador FSN Honored
GDA Angola Alliance a Model
Red Sea Protection Recognized
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Holly Ferrette.
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Natural Resources Officer Holly Ferrette took on environmental
protection of the Red Sea as a challenge four years ago, and
this year received the Molly Kux Environmental Award for her
work.
The Red Sea, with its cold, blue waters edged by dun-colored
deserts, is a popular tourist destination. But its coral reefs
are being damaged by unsound environmental policies.
“The biggest threat is tourism,” said Ferrette.
But tourism “also presents the biggest opportunity for
sustainable economic growth in the region,” she added.
Ferrette persuaded Egyptian ministers to declare a large
portion of the southern Red Sea coast an ecotourism development
zone, to engage local Bedouin communities, and to charge a
small fee at Egypt’s park system.
The ministers feared that tourism would be hurt if there
was a fee. But Ferrette eased their fears by citing economic
studies to show that the environment can improve while embracing
tourism.
Ferrette also produced a plan to attract fewer tourists,
but ones who typically spend more while on vacation. Egypt
is inundated with tourists, but they tend to be from less
wealthy nations and spend little, barely contributing to the
local economy.
Though her work in Egypt has been satisfying, Ferrette said
her most memorable moments are of her daughter.
“My daughter was born just months before we moved to
Cairo, so Egypt’s monuments and deserts will always bring
to mind memories of the various development milestones for
my daughter—toddling around pyramids, changing diapers
on desert camping trips, and splashing in the Red Sea.”
Ferrette soon will leave Egypt to direct USAID environmental
programs in Bolivia.
Komich’s Work in Mali Lauded
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Carla Komich
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Carla Komich was with the Bureau for Africa two years ago
when she inherited by default a position managing the Africa
Anticorruption Initiative. Now she has received one of the
Agency’s Meritorious Honor Awards in 2004 for that work.
“When I moved into that division, I was managing the
initiative on an interim basis while we were looking for an
anticorruption specialist,” she said.
Eventually, Komich said, “I was deemed the anticorruption
specialist, even though I didn’t have the background.
So I had to do a lot of learning and very quickly.”
Working with DCHA/DG and missions in Africa on various programs
successes and lessons helped Komich gain familiarity with
anticorruption work and manage the bureau’s Anticorruption
Initiative.
Komich, who has been with USAID since 2001, also received
the award in recognition for co-authoring an assessment of
northern Mali, which brought together representatives from
the Agency and the departments of State and Defense.
“It was a fantastic opportunity to work with other agencies
and think strategically about how each of our skill sets and
programs could be coordinated in an effort to promote peace,
stability, and democracy,” she said.
The assessment, a two-week trip to Northern Mali, allowed
Komich to work alongside the USAID mission director and U.S.
ambassador, both of whom are women.
“I was really impressed and thankful to have the opportunity
to work with these very successful women who are working in
northern Mali, which is a conservative Muslim area, and seeing
them navigate through and succeed in the culture.”
El Salvador FSN Honored
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| Rosa Maura Mayorga
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Foreign Service National (FSN) Rosa Maura Mayorga was named
one of USAID’s eight FSNs of the year after working for
three and a half years as head of a $135 million reconstruction
program to repair damage caused by a powerful earthquake in
El Salvador.
“It was a lot of money over a very short period of time,”
she said.
The program, which ends this year, has built 26,000 new homes
for people left without shelter by the earthquake.
“The team that Rosa heads is really fantastic,”
said Mark Carrato, desk officer for El Salvador. “They
found lots of creative solutions to the various challenges
they faced.”
A major obstacle to reconstruction was that people often
did not have land titles to the sites where their homes had
been. So Mayorga’s program—before engaging in any
physical work—worked with the El Salvadoran government
on securing land titles for thousands of families.
Mayorga has worked on disaster and emergency programs at
USAID/El Salvador for 16 years, including reconstruction after
another earthquake in 1986, after the country’s civil
war, and the clean-up after 1998’s destructive hurricane
Mitch. But the 2001 earthquake reconstruction program was
“my biggest challenge,” she said.
GDA Angola Alliance a Model
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G.L. Kirkland
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A public-private partnership in Angola, spearheaded by USAID
and oil giant ChevronTexaco, won this year’s Global Development
Alliance Excellence Award. For two years, the alliance has
been rebuilding agricultural production and rehabilitating
roads so that farmers could more easily access markets.
The program distributed food, seeds, tools, and technical
help to nearly 800,000 farmers —about 7 percent of the
country’s population—in the Planalto region, where
thousands of displaced people have lived since a ravaging
civil war ended in early 2002.
Farmers got help developing business plans and access to
tools, fertilizers, and trade networks. The program’s
biggest accomplishment of 2004 was the opening of Angola’s
first microcredit bank, which makes loans valued from $100
to $15,000.
ChevronTexaco and USAID each invested $25 million in the
program.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever reached so
far away from our operating area,” said G.L. Kirkland,
president of ChevronTexaco Overseas Petroleum. “Between
ChevronTexaco, USAID, and all the NGOs, the impact is just
incredible.”
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