About the Author: Nancy Lindborg serves as Assistant Administrator for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Today is World Humanitarian Day. Reaching out to those suffering from crisis and disaster is a fundamental human impulse and a deeply enshrined American value. It is a value we share with people around the globe. It is the silver lining of any crisis, when the best of who we are as people emerges just when things are the bleakest.

Today is an opportunity to honor the humanitarian impulse in all of us and to applaud all the ways in which people mobilize to help others, even when they have little to spare. I saw it in Tunisia in March, when people, already reeling from an economic plunge, spontaneously organized to take in Libyan refugees who needed help. We are seeing it with the Kenyans for Kenya… more »