Inter-American Foundation
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| Abbreviation | IAF |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1969 |
| Type | foreign assistance agency |
| Headquarters | Washington, DC, United States |
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President
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Robert N. Kaplan |
| Website | www.iaf.gov |
The Inter-American Foundation, or IAF, is an independent agency of the United States government that funds development projects undertaken by grassroots groups and nongovernmental organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. It was created through the Foreign Assistance Act of 1969 as an experimental alternative to traditional foreign assistance that operates government-to-government on a much larger scale. The IAF receives its funds through annual allocations by Congress and from the Social Progress Trust Fund administered by the Inter-American Development Bank and consisting of payments on U.S. government loans extended under the Alliance for Progress to various Latin American and Caribbean governments. Since beginning operations in 1972, the IAF has awarded 4,920 grants worth more than $665 million.
The IAF has had a low profile because of its comparatively small budget. However, during the mid-1980s, the IAF received some national attention when it became a political battleground for President Ronald Reagan and Congressional Democrats.
Representative Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.) was the architect of the legislation to establish the Inter-American Foundation, which redesigned foreign aid to benefit the poorest of people in developing countries.
With his articles in Foreign Affairs and his book The Engines of Change, Harvard professor George C. Lodge significantly influenced the intellectual climate that led to the passage of the IAF’s enabling legislation. Most notably, Lodge wrote that poverty was the greatest threat to U.S. interests in the Americas. In “U.S. Aid to Latin America: Funding Radical Change,” which appeared in Foreign Affairs in July 1969., he urged creation of an “American Foundation [to] find and fund the engines of change which work directly to revolutionize Latin American social and political structures.” Lodge was appointed to the IAF’s founding board of directors in 1971.
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