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By Brett Fieldcamp
Oklahoma native Melanie Jennings is on the front line of foreign humanitarian efforts with USAID.
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Vice President Kamala Harris’s words to the staggering numbers fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have rung a dissonant chord in the ears of the people charged with coordinating aid to the crisis. Organizations like USAID are designed for “international development,” a difficult-to-define objective that amounts primarily to addressing the root causes of the same issues fueling the masses fleeing natural disasters, rampant crime, and economic collapse in the region, but a big part of that objective undoubtedly relies on a level of understanding and compassion that the relief workers bring to the job from their own pasts and experiences. For one woman, herself the child of an immigrant, that experience began right here in Oklahoma. Del City native Melanie Jennings has been with USAID since 2019, but honed her skills for foreign aid and relief work through tenures with AmeriCorps, the Red Cross, FEMA, and even a time in Switzerland with the UN. Her resume speaks for itself, but her exposure to disaster, and to the efforts of the people working to provide help, extends much further back to an historically dark day in OK. “The definitive moment was the tornado outbreak of May 3rd, 1999,” Jennings says. “I distinctly remember the sound the tornado made as it lifted and went over my house not realizing just how lucky we were. Seeing all of this at 12 years old was intense and something I’d never forget for the rest of my life. I don’t think I necessarily knew I wanted to pursue aid work then but I knew I wanted to pursue a career that helped people recover from disasters like this, especially my community.” Growing up first in Del City and then Moore during her teenage years, the community of which she speaks could often feel like two separate worlds in
conflict. Jennings’ mother emigrated from the Philippines and has worked throughout her life to instill in Melanie a deep reverence and love for that part of her heritage, something that can still be very tricky in suburban Oklahoma.
Melanie Jennings | Photo provided
“It made me hyper aware at an early age that I was different,” Jennings explains. “However, I think that made me a more resilient and understanding person. It’s connected me to folks with similar lived experiences. It’s taught me to be more compassionate overall with a deep respect for other cultures and diversity.” Humanitarian work and foreign aid, then, seemed like the perfect outlet both for Jennings’ desire to assist with disas-
