by Sharon Pauling

About the author: Sharon Pauling is a policy analyst for Bread for the World, a Washington, D.C., organization that attempts to influence U.S. policies affecting poor and hungry people worldwide.

Overall, foreign aid is unpopular and threatened. However, foreign aid programs designed to reduce poverty, protect the environment and meet humanitarian need—that have long been the focus and concern of church groups—are especially threatened.

The election of President Clinton and new appointments in the State Department and the Agency for International Development finally provided the opportunity for church groups and non-governmental agencies to turn the administration’s attention to the problems that have long afflicted US foreign aid. At the same time, new assaults on aid to developing countries arose from shifting...