U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau for Food Security and the Deputy Coordinator for Feed the Future Beth Dunford will travel to Burma March 13 - 17 and Thailand March 17 - 22, 2017.

 

In Burma, Dunford will meet with Mission staff and government officials to discuss how U.S. assistance bolsters Burma's transition to democracy by helping the country develop economically.

 

Dunford will then travel to Thailand where she will join USAID staff and partners from across Asia in a technical conference on strengthening market systems. These visits will focus on how the Feed the Future initiative has helped countries in Asia advance food security and nutrition and build stability.

 

In 2015, Feed the Future reached more than 3.3 million rural households in Asia to equip them with knowledge and tools to feed themselves and helped small-scale entrepreneurs access growth capital through more than $9 million in agricultural and rural loans. The initiative has contributed to drops in poverty and malnutrition between 12 and 36 percent within select countries on the continent.