This month, the Trump administration announced nearly $2 billion for faith-based groups, the largest allocation of global health foreign assistance to faith-based organizations in more than 20 years. The bulk of it, $1.4 billion, funds health services, including an $850 million award to World Vision supporting 2,500 faith-based hospitals and clinics across 17 countries.
Whatever the administration’s ultimate motives, this is an important signal to my public health and humanitarian relief colleagues. Even as the old aid architecture is collapsing, the faith economy is not. Washington has rediscovered faith as a delivery mechanism. The bigger opportunity is faith as a source of capital.