With its historic ties and cultural affinity to the country, India has already provided impressive civilian assistance.
Toronto based Greg Thomson created and coded the site in 8 months without outside assistance, an impressive feat in a competitive industry.
Vermont businesses, individuals, and foundations have donated at least $4 million, possibly up to $6 million in assistance, an impressive figure, but not a fraction of what was needed.
But despite this impressive record, global poverty assistance always seems to end up on the chopping block -- despite the fact that development aid is less than one percent of the federal budget.
In fact, though, Bush's aid hasn't been as extravagant as his talk, but it's still impressive: $19 billion in "official development assistance" actually delivered in 2004, up from the Clinton low of less than $7 billion in 1997 (those are OECD numbers, and the U.S. figure is a bit higher in '97 because it included military aid that the OECD doesn't count).
That a small and relatively poor country that is also suffering from the ongoing drought would be in a position to help Somalia is itself remarkable; that Somaliland achieved this position without being officially recognised by the international community as a sovereign nation – and thus without being eligible for international assistance – is truly impressive.
"In 1996 alone, U.S. exports to the region totaled 2 1/2 times that amount". Yet even with that impressive showing, we spend only 7percentt of our foreign aid and military assistance in Latin America, less than both Germany and Japan individually.
That would be the same NATO which proved utterly unable to take down Moammar Gadaffi's not especially impressive military until the U.S. stepped in with crucial assistance.
Moreover, Japan's culture (both traditional and popular), overseas development assistance, and support of international institutions are impressive sources of soft power.
Impressive work on the effect of good teaching or well-targeted poverty assistance suggest such programmes make a difference.
Professional-class emigrants from South India have spearheaded the construction of a series of impressive Shrivaishnava-style temples throughout the United States, sometimes receiving financial and technical assistance from the great Vaishnava temple institutions at Tirupati.
