The Encyclopedia Britannica dates foreign assistance programs to 18th-century Prussia and other European powers that subsidized their military allies. Foreign aid as we understand it today — a transfer of resources to improve the well-being of people in the recipient nation — began in earnest after the Second World War with Marshall Plan economic aid from the United States to the nations of western Europe, and with the founding of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

By the 21st century, combined annual foreign aid approached $70 billion (thousand million). By some measures, it has totaled $1.5 trillion since 1960. And yet poverty, hunger, and underdevelopment are still with us. The question, inevitably, is why?

This issue of eJournal USA offers leading thinkers’ explanations of how the United States and other nations continue to wrestle with this question. In what ways has foreign assistance been structured, conditioned, distributed? What has been tried, and what works? How has the new "transformational diplomacy" described by Secretary Rice shaped the U.S. aid model, and how does that model differ from others?

This issue also profiles a number of American efforts — launched by the U.S. government, by individual American citizens, and by partnerships between the two — to help those in need. From the Peace Corps to the medical vessel USNS Comfort, and from Ethiopian Americans pooling their resources to establish an Addis Ababa medical clinic to an extraordinary citizen who works with local leaders to build schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, these stories illustrate how every one of us can find a way to help.

In our overview essay, Oxford University Professor Paul Collier explains and critiques the many distribution models that nations, NGOs, and other organizations have used to get the cash where it is needed. Many of these models, he suggests, have not worked as well as we might have hoped, but aid professionals do seem to learn from their experiences. Collier also outlines a potential alternative model for future foreign assistance.

Steven Radelet, a former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Treasury Department, offers a detailed précis of U.S. foreign assistance programs. Because these offer a range of cash, commodities, and technical expertise, which are distributed through public, quasi-public, and private sources and initiatives, the scope of the combined American efforts is not always fully understood.

Carol Adelman, a senior fellow and director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity, focuses on how private capital plays an increasingly important role in the U.S. effort to assist the world’s poor and to spur global development.

We hope this issue conveys a sense of the energy, determination, and creativity being applied to alleviate and, indeed, to conquer some of the world’s most intractable problems.

— The Editors