GRI was founded in 1983 to help channel American philanthropic dollars effectively and reliably to grass- roots charities in the developing world. Originally the stimulus which had evoked it was sudden disasters, but as the organization matured it has increasingly focused on longer-term persistent issues—e.g., the environment, food production, economic development, literacy, leadership development, health, labor, democratization, gender, human rights and human development. GRI has cultivated deep partnerships with 24 grassroots organizations in Haiti, Brazil, Mexico and the Middle East, to whom it has distributed over $30 million in grants and material aid for specific, problem-solving, projects—e.g., helping Mexican family farms to grow corn for low-cost tortillas; Haitians to distribute 2,000 pigs to rural families, plant 200,000 trees to reduce deforestation, and recover 10,000 acres of arable land; Brazilians to build 316 cement cisterns in an experiment to cope with cyclic droughts and water shortages; and Palestinian doctors to operate 25 community health centers and a network of mobile clinics. As a result of solid productivity, GRI has gained the respect of much larger US organizations—e.g., Grantmakers Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam America, and Equal Exchange. If you are interested in developing a foreign policy of your own, this is an excellent and reliable place to begin.