Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the president and a senior White House adviser, announced a new global effort [in February] to help 50 million women in the developing world by 2025.
“This new initiative will for the first time coordinate America’s commitment to one of the most undervalued resources in the developing world — the talent, ambition and genius of women,” Trump wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that announced the news. For the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, the U.S. government will team up with several private companies such as UPS and Pepsi to “facilitate complementary private-sector investments to achieve our shared goals,” Trump said.
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Tom Babington (UMD, Class of 2016), acting USAID spokesman, emphasized that the agency had always worked on issues related to women’s economic empowerment. What’s different about the new project is that it would allow better coordination with other agencies, Babington said. “This results in better alignment of U.S. government efforts, which in turn increases leverage, resources and impact through better-aligned programming.”