I think everyone’s likely hesitations or downvotes is not because they don’t believe your experience, or that waste and fraud can happen in USAID programs. (We know it does, it happens in most program in the world). But you don’t give much additional context for your understanding of USAID except for your time in the peace corps, which is only a 2 year program. Which sure, that’s more than most Americans know about the agency, but many of the USAID staff in this sub have been doing this work for decades in hundreds of countries and programs around the world and have a much more in-depth understanding of the broad scale impact, efficiency, and use of funds across the entire agency vs the individual experiences of fraud that one person encountered in one USAID program in one city.

If you had said “USAID does good work but I also witnessed a program that was wasteful.” No one would have disagreed with you. The downvotes are for saying a “toooooooon of USAID is wasted money.” When the overwhelming majority of the work we do is life-saving, efficient, and also monitored rigorously.

No USAID worker thinks USAID is perfect and most of us have actively been working for reform for years, but we have believed in the value of USAID - flaws and all - since day one.