Angelica Silvero, head of the World Bank Group Speakers Bureau, spoke at the Global Issues Network conference on March 12 about how she works to reduce poverty and fix world issues through partnerships with other countries and organizations.

Mrs. Silvero presented in front of over 150 students at the conference in hopes of educating them on the work of the World Bank and the role of their various agencies in developing middle and low-income countries around the world.

“It’s important that you help so people can have their own lives. This isn’t money as charity, this is money so they can work so that everybody wins,” Mrs. Silvero said.

The World Bank invests in people in order to accelerate growth and build resilience in struggling countries. The bank works with middle and low-income countries to give loans to the private sector such as investors and the public sector such as governments. They borrow cheap money from markets, add a little bit of interest and provide aid to countries with long mortgages.

“We give loans that come with knowledge and expertise from different countries and bring collective action,” Silvero said.

While not all countries will receive humanitarian support, any country is able to join the bank and play a part in their work. There are 189 member countries and thousands of NGO’s that the World Bank works with every day.

Countries buy into the bank through shares and therefore become partners who both give and receive aid depending on the prosperity of their economy. While some countries invest more than others in the World Bank, everybody plays a role in achieving their worldwide goals to improve the lives of humans.

“We belong to everybody, to be a member of the bank you have to buy shares and become a member. The Europeans and Americans are very influential, but there are over 100 others who also have a part,” Silvero said.

The bank has numerous goals that they hope to achieve throughout the world by helping countries in the development and advancement of their economies and most of all the standard of living.

“We work to lower the global population living in extreme poverty to 3 percent by 2030. We also hope to promote shared prosperity throughout the world by raising the incomes of the poorest 40 percent,” she said.

There are many areas of development that the World Bank strives to improve, though Silvero feels especially devoted to one area in particular.

“I would say the most important aspect of development is health, though it is very expensive; you need doctors, you need infrastructure and you need equipment and they all depend on each other,” Silvero said.

Many agree that health is an issue that deserves help and attention and the World Bank does, in fact, give aid to the sector since it fits into their overall mission.

Silvero is not alone in believing that health is an area of need especially since the World Bank’s mission involves global healthcare. They strive to rehabilitate the economies of middle to low-income countries through various projects that provide aid, expertise and seek action. The bank invests in many different sectors including government agencies and NGO’s, though Mrs. Silvero’s main goal is much more personal than many.

“My grandparents never went to school, my father and mother went to middle school, things can change over generations and that is what I hope to do for other people.”

By Anders Westermann