Speeches

USAID Names The Coca-Cola Company Its “Alliance of the Year” for 2007

"Our highest honor . . .given to that single company who made the greatest impact on positively changing the lives of people in the developing world."

Recognizes partnership in 17 countries helping more than 250,000 people

Washington, D.C. - March 26, 2008

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Highlights - USAID Award Program (3:10)		Full Remarks - USAID Award Program (15:12)

REMARKS BY USAID ADMINISTRATOR HENRIETTA FORE

Ms. FORE:  It is my pleasure to welcome all of you on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development to the USAID “Alliance of the Year” Award event.  I would like to particularly extend a warm welcome, not only to Mr. Neville Isdell, the Chief Executive Officer of The Coca-Cola Company, but also to many of the members of the distinguished Coca-Cola Company who are here tonight.  So, thank you all very, very much.  We are delighted to be able to celebrate this occasion with all of you.

Tonight's celebration is a real opportunity for USAID to highlight the importance that we place on deepening and broadening the impact of our development assistance by forging creative, catalytic, and innovative partnerships with the private sector.  The challenges we face, as a planet, and throughout the developing world are enormous, and none of us can address these problems alone.

The USAID Global Development Alliance model combines United States foreign assistance funding and local country assistance commitment with the expertise, resources and creativity of leading private sector institutions. 

Joining forces has greatly increased the impact of development assistance around the world.  Since Fiscal Year 2001, USAID has committed $2.3 billion to approximately 650 public/private partnerships worldwide; and in return these alliances have leveraged over $6.8 billion in contributions from more than 1,700 distinct partners.

Each year USAID takes special pride in recognizing the achievements of our most successful and high-impact public/private partnerships and alliances.  For 2007, it is our great pleasure to bestow this honor on The Coca-Cola Company for the outstanding leadership it has demonstrated through its strategic partnership with USAID to address the world's critical water issues.

It is fitting that we are gathered here, on this night, just a few days after World Water Day, to celebrate a partnership that is focused on finding sustainable, and scaleable, solutions to the serious water problems facing the developing countries around the world.

As many of you know, water is a high priority issue for the United States government foreign assistance.  For its part, Coca-Cola has embraced water issues as a central focus of its own environmental stewardship commitment.  The Coca-Cola Company and USAID have a water development alliance, which has the catchy name of WADA.  It is an innovative global partnership that is working to increase access to basic water supply and sanitation services for the urban and rural poor; protecting high-value and water sources to ensure sustainability for future generations, and improve the practices of water users in the industrial, commercial and agricultural sectors to increase efficiency, and also reduce pollution.

With more than $14 million of combined funding, to date, the (WADA) Alliance is currently addressing critical community water needs in 17 countries around the world, providing a broad range of benefits to over 250,000 people in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, and plans are underway to expand activities to more countries this year. 

The WADA alliance with Coca-Cola is considered by USAID to be one of our best models for global-scale public/private development partnership.  The achievements directly support Coca-Cola's own internal corporate commitment to excel in water stewardship and create a ripple effect over time to hundreds of Coca-Cola facilities, and thousands of Coca-Cola employees around the world. 

The Alliance serves as an exemplary model for other private sector actors to adopt sound water management practices in their own activities and communities.  Additionally, WADA directs -- supports the health and well-being and the livelihoods of the communities in which the company and USAID both operate, providing substantial and tangible progress toward our development goals.

For all of these reasons, USAID's partnership with Coca-Cola stands out as exemplary; it demonstrates that working together, we truly can become more than the sum of our parts.  Alliances like this make it possible to help individuals and communities to build their own futures. As Administrator of the U.S. Agency of International Development, it is my great honor to officially present the 2007 USAID Alliance of the Year Award.  This is our highest award.  It is given to that single company who made the greatest impact on positively changing the lives of people in the developing world.  For 2007, this award is presented to the person who has made this his signature program, Mr. Neville Isdell, Chief Executive Officer of The Coca-Cola Company.  Thank you. [Applause.]

REMARKS BY MR. ISDELL

Mr. ISDELL:  Good evening, everyone.  And Ambassador Fore -- or, I should really say Henrietta, because that's the way that we operate together today, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm really here tonight to accept this award on behalf of the nearly 1 million people that work in the Coca-Cola system around the world.  That system is, not just The Coca-Cola Company, but all of the bottlers, the 900-odd plants that operate in over 200 countries around the world.
And I have to tell you that, in many respects, I say I'm honored -- I'm actually humbled to be here.  And let me tell you that USAID is an institution that I've watched over the years that embodies not just the compassion and the generosity of the American people, but a real level of competence in terms of making a real difference to people's lives around the world.

I am humbled to be with you, the leaders of USAID with representatives of the 17 countries -- and there will be more to come - in which we work.  And also with the many partners and stakeholders -- because that multiplier is very, very important -- that we work with around the world.

My Childhood Train Trip Through Africa in 1954
I'm actually struck about what this means for our business but, you know, you look at me here and probably you're probably saying, "What does it mean to you, personally?"  And whilst this is not just personal, because water is at the core of what we do, for me these relationships really take me back, pretty well 54 years when, starting in Cape Town, I spent three and a half days on a train, going up to Lusaka and Zambia, some two thousand miles.

[Imagine] the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, looking out, first of all from the beauty of Cape Town, across the barren Karoo, even in that January, a fairly dry, then Bechuanaland, [now] Botswana, the magnificence and, if we come back to water, the unbelievable flow of the Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya. And then, of course, through the rains and the thunder of the January rainy season to arrive in Zambia.

During those three and a half days, I think more was formulated in me, and in my own mind, than any other time of my life.  And during those years, living in Africa -- if you work it out, actually, it was some 26 years -- to some degree, I became an African. I felt connected to the soil, the warmth of the people, the countless individual generosities, and also the tragedies -- the fact that people didn't have access to basic sanitation.  They had the resource of their own will power, but they didn't have the resource to be able to provide for themselves.

Returning to Africa 45 Years Later To Launch Our Partnership with USAID
So, then fast-forward to this January, when I went to Mali.  I've never been to Mali before, but it was one of the, in fact, was the signature project that we started up together with USAID.  And together with our many other partners, I went to the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Bamako, and dedicated what was, actually the next step in the journey which we are on in Mali and elsewhere, which was the inauguration of the beginning of the building of a wastewater treatment plant which will benefit some 25,000 people around that plant, in that community.

It was on that very warm afternoon, a reaffirmation of actually, everything that Henrietta's talked about, because there were hundreds of people gathered together -- members of the community -- but there were government ministers. There were local officials.  There were, very importantly, people like Alex Newton of USAID, and the U.S. Ambassador to Mali (Terence McCulley) was there, as well as our bottling partner (BGI), and obviously our other partners and neighbors.

That wastewater treatment plant will allow us to use what was waste, unusable water -- not for individual consumption, because that marks some of our other projects --  but to provide to that community the ability to help them with irrigation of their crops.

Our Global Partnership with USAID (17 Countries, Helping 250,000 People)

Now, it's not just in Africa.  Henrietta mentioned, it actually is around the globe that we're finally getting to the stage where we're actually able to build scale.  We're actually able to think about the transformation of entire communities. 

“To Grow Exponentially, Be Collaborative”

One of the sort of maxims that I live by and this is by “Mr. Anonymous” -- I don't know who wrote this -- but I love it, and they say,

“If you want to grow and improve incrementally, you should be competitive. 
If you want to grow exponentially, you need to be collaborative.” 

Think about that because that, essentially, is what our partnership is with USAID.  It's part of that journey that we have as The Coca-Cola Company to truly becoming, what I like to call, a 21st Century company. 

We Must Support Sustainable Communities to Become a 21st Century Company
A 21st Century company recognizes that we have to be, in both perception and reality, a functioning part of every community in which we operate.

It's about sustainable communities.  If we don't have sustainable communities, we don't have a sustainable business, period.

Water’s Connection to Our Business
So that's what -- not just drives me -- that's what drives our people around the world, because we’ve got line of sight, we've got connectivity to this whole core of own brand, which is water, that key ingredient.  I think when you talk about business engagement, you need to have that connectivity to your own business for it to be sustainable.  I will hand [this] over to my successor as CEO in July. I'll stay on as Chairman until April of 2009, and this has life long past me, because of the connectivity to the business, because of the reality it is at the core of what we're all about.  And that's why I really feel that the multiplier that we've started to generate -- and we're only at the beginning -- will absolutely continue.

I really want to thank you, Henrietta -- I'll go informal again -- for the work of all of your people around the world and for your partnership.  But, I also want to thank the governments and the NGOs and also the local partners, because there are unsung heroes and heroines in every part of the world that we operate, who dedicate their lives to making their own communities that much better.

Truly your efforts and their efforts are starting to make the world a better place, I hope not just incrementally, but exponentially.  Because that really, not just defines where we're coming from, but absolutely defines our challenge together for the future.  Thank you very much, indeed.

Learn more about our partnership with USAID.

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