Foreign assistance can continue to be a force for the common good—just as President Truman envisioned it decades ago. To do so in the face of growing, urgent challenges, we will need to change our methods—to push the limits of what has long been possible, identify unorthodox solutions to unorthodox problems, and find ways to effect change beyond traditional means. We have an opportunity today to do aid better—and USAID is seizing it.

Just as President Kennedy saw the opportunity created by his own era of rapid globalization, population growth, and technological change, we must now realize the potential of today’s moment: to transform the way the world does development and bring about a new era of gains in global health, peace, and prosperity.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has taken on the most pressing challenges our planet has faced. Today, the same Agency that helped eradicate smallpox and avert an age of famine by launching the Green Revolution is confronting threats of overwhelming size and scale.

As the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) celebrates its 60th year, we take this opportunity to reflect on all the ways in which the world is a healthier, cleaner, more democratic, and more prosperous place because of the generosity of the American people. President John F. Kennedy founded USAID in 1961 based on the belief that every person, regardless of where they were born, deserved to live in dignity.