Fifty Years Fly By

Ada Jo Mann was Director of The GEM Initiative, a multimillion- dollar grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to improve the leadership and organizational capacity of nongovernmental organizations in all regions of the world. She was the co-creator and first director of the Small Project Assistance Program (SPA), a grant program for Peace Corps volunteers funded by USAID which began in 1983 and is still ongoing.