With the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2025, many in the international development sector have worked hard to pivot, using their skills and experience in different ways to continue to improve lives. In the Future of Development Work series, SFS faculty weigh in on the ways in which international development professionals can continue to thrive and build careers of impact.
Katherine Marshall is a Professor of the Practice of Development, Conflict, and Religion in SFS and a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. She has worked for more than five decades on international development; her career with the World Bank (1971-2006) involved a wide range of leadership assignments, including serving as country director in the World Bank’s Africa section for the Sahel region and then for Southern Africa. Marshall has been closely engaged in the creation and development of the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) and is its executive director.
In his first exhortation, Dilexi Te, Pope Leo XIV argued that: “Our love and our deepest convictions need to be continually cultivated, and we do so through our concrete actions.” He challenged us to be compassionate and practical as we work to support others: “Remaining in the realm of ideas and theories, while failing to give them expression through frequent and practical acts of charity, will eventually cause even our most cherished hopes and aspirations to weaken and fade away.”
Solving “the problem of world poverty” demands intelligence, diligence and social responsibility and both charity and broader policy and program support.
There’s much wisdom in this example of what some religious actors would term a “prophetic voice” that is sorely needed these days. Pope Leo, alongside other religious and secular leaders, urges our societies and individuals to keep the ethical compass pointing towards support for humanitarian needs and development. The moral and practical case for such support is powerful, grounded in human rights principles that in turn draw on a rich array of diverse and shared religious and philosophical teachings; pertinent ideas include the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and the Bible’s story of the Good Samaritan.
Today’s crisis for foreign aid challenges many critical aspects of development work. Worse, it calls into question longstanding assumptions and norms that support shared commitments to global progress towards more equitable and flourishing societies.
Prophetic reminders of the ideals are sorely needed. But so is a reminder that the development community has progressed in countless ways since it took its current form, notably from the 1970s. It’s far from static or set in some stone. The enterprise is a different, far richer and more diverse universe today, with intricate partnerships and ideals embedded in lofty goals and norms that demand rigorous analysis and real attention to diverse communities and local leadership.
Even with the clarity of such an ethical compass, we need to revamp strategic and practical approaches in the light of contemporary realities. This can truly—and necessarily—combine idealism and compassion with pragmatic realism. Constant reminders that equitable societies are desirable, desired and feasible are essential and helpful, even as the path towards peaceful flourishing societies is demanding and often torturous.
Development work—local, national and international—can build on empathy and hunger for social justice with the questing breadth across ideas and sectors that Migara Jayawardena evokes in his piece for this series. As we focus our ethical compass on basic issues of social justice, we need to appreciate better what “multiple modernities” means in practice: rigid recipes cannot replace context-specific analysis and adaptation. Strategies can and should center on the kinds of common goals for an equitable society that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) map out.
Communities, however, let alone individuals, will nonetheless have diverse aspirations and give weight to different priorities (Poet Annie Dillard makes a powerful argument for this in “This is the Life”). Each situation demands creativity and stubborn persistence, alongside the adaptation that is almost always essential.
At some level, the need to adapt to different settings is obvious, at least in theory, as is the need for openness to differing perspectives, including political voices, women’s engagement and local leadership. But it’s a complex challenge. An aspect that too often is missing is appreciation for the complex roles that religious beliefs and communities play in the lives of most people. A recent Pew Research Center survey puts the number of people globally with a religious affiliation at about 80%, with three fourths of those surveyed highlighting the importance of religion in their lives. A critical point that speaks to those preparing for future development work is the need for both micro, detail-focused skills and disciplinary breadth. That needs to include more focus on taking culture and societal values, in all their complexity, better into account.
Religious traditions and teachings focus on charity and compassion: prophetic voices call for making a “preferential option for the poor” an imperative, not a matter for debate or choice. Bold action on sustainable debt needs to be a shared priority. On these and thorny topics like inequality, there are countless needs and tough choices. But the common experience of the development community, with its wide range of actors, is that with commitment, professionalism and compassion, the end of shared prosperity is truly possible. The present crisis exemplifies the insight from the Chinese ideogram that danger also can open opportunities. Let’s seize them, with ideals and action.