South Sudan, a nation founded in 2011 following a destructive civil war, is a challenging place for international development organizations and partners to work. Threats to the safety of foreign development workers are widespread, making implementation of projects extremely difficult. In this context, programming through local organizations, who are embedded in communities, and therefore can operate less conspicuously, is almost a necessity. So when the South Sudan Mission needed to acquire data about the quality of services being provided to people living with HIV/AIDS around South Sudan, these circumstances, combined with a Mission team that was open-minded about finding the right mechanism for achieving the Agency’s objectives, created the conditions for a first-of-its-kind direct contract award to a local organization in South Sudan.

The narrow streets and sky blue doors and windows of Morocco’s crumbling mellahs, or Jewish quarters, contain a treasure trove of history. But when this history was at risk of being lost, two new USAID partners—Rabat-based Association Mimouna and New York-based American Sephardi Federation (ASF)—co-created a project, supported under USAID’s New Partnerships Initiative (NPI), to train residents of the mellahs to share the history of their neighborhoods as tour guides and through the sale of Judaica-focused handicrafts and traditional food, giving residents an economic lifeline while preserving an important dimension of Morocco’s diverse past.

If there’s one word to describe the Beth Nahrain Organization for Women (BNOW), it is “resilient.” BNOW, a local nongovernmental organization formed in 2002 that works to empower women in Iraqi society, has endured decades of conflict and upheaval. In 2014, it faced an even heavier blow—the organization was displaced from its locations in Qaraqosh, Bartella, and Mosul due to the invasion by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which threatened religious and ethnic minorities like the BNOW team and the populations they served. BNOW was fractured, and members were in survival mode—not at all in a position to address long-term organizational capacity needs.

Like so many other scrappy start-ups that have found success—think Apple, Amazon, or Google—the South African health care nonprofit Right to Care has its own story of humble beginnings.

USAID's partners are instrumental to every part of the Agency's work. The COVID-19 pandemic has made that vital coordination even clearer, as local organizations worked together with USAID to provide life-saving vaccines and to stabilize hard-hit communities. The article below highlights a few of the many ways USAID has relied on its local partners in Asia to advance shared development goals. The full article was originally posted on Medium.com/USAID-2030.