Annual Meeting 2004
The 40th Annual Meeting of
The Association for International Agriculture 
and Rural Development

"Progress in International Agriculture and Rural Development"
Speakers and Panelists

Theodore F. Weihe
Executive Director
U.S. Overseas Cooperative Development Council

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Ted Weihe is Executive Director of the U.S. Overseas Cooperative Development Council, which consists of eight national cooperative organizations engaged in over 100 long-term projects in some 75 countries with over $200 million in annual revenues. He has initiated over 30 successful development projects worldwide: telecommunication cooperatives in Poland, alternative micro-finance for small businesses and NGOs in Romania, dairy associations in Albania, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Poland, Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer programs worldwide, Seal of Quality standards in Macedonia, agribusiness marketing in Ukraine and cooperative development on the West Bank. He initiated Participa (Participation), one of the most successful grassroots democracy programs in Chile that was instrumental in its return to democracy. He conducted a yearlong dialogue with USAID and participated in a joint cooperative mission to Southern Sudan. He has conducted over 30 evaluations of cooperative development projects overseas.

At present, he serves on the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid and led its partnership efforts to revise its Strategic Plan, adopt new strategies for failed states, and formulate an agency-wide gender action

 policy. In 2000, He gained passage of the Overseas Cooperative Development Act that expands USAIDís mandate to promote all types of cooperatives overseas as well as cooperative provisions in nearly every foreign assistance bills for 20 years.

He founded the Campaign for U.S. Global Leadership, composed of over 340 companies, NGOs and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which reversed the decline and helped increase the 150 International Affairs Account to historic levels. While in USAID, he gain passage of food assistance that saved over one million lives in refugee camps in Ethiopia, Pakistan and Thailand.

He was special assistant for cooperatives to M. Peter McPherson, USAID Administrator; worked as environmental and international development lobbyist for League of Women Voters, Hill reporter for the Interstate Natural Gas Association and served as a Captain in the Air Force during the Vietnam War.

He holds a BSFS for Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Master of Planning from the University of Virginia.

He has a lifetime record of community involvement in Arlington County including as chairman of the Neighborhood Conservation Advisory Committee, Committee of 100, Yorktown Civic Association, and is currently a member of Arlington County Planning Commission, among others.