When I left New Hampshire for my first job, my minister-father instilled in me the need to serve the poor. Thirty-two years later, I am still at it, now in Ghana, where President Obama travels this week. While my desire to help the vulnerable launched my career in international development, pragmatism defines why Americans should remain engaged in making the world better.

The interconnected global community means that the prosperity of others is closely tied to our own. The severe economic crisis and the recent threat of a health pandemic are stark reminders that borders cannot insulate us. That's why smart U.S. engagement in the fight against global poverty and disease matters as much to the poor in Ghana as it does to Americans in New Hampshire and the other 49 states.

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Ghanaians strive for a better tomorrow. Here in West Africa, their commitment to stability and growth means greater development and trade. The country's poverty rate dropped from 52 percent in 1992 to 28.5 percent in 2006. Yet there's still more to do. Ghana's poor live a reality of poverty few Americans can fully fathom. In a country where agriculture is the economy's backbone, employing 60 to 70 percent of workers, a typical farmer knows the burden of extreme poverty.

He or she will farm a few acres of onions and cabbage to support a family of four or five children. The family's home is a mud hut with a grass roof, with no electricity and the floor for beds. A single hand pump in the village center provides all the water, which can become contaminated and spread disease. Children walk two miles to the nearest school -- if a school is nearby at all -- with class held under a tree because of overcrowding.

A primary reason why Ghana's farmers live in such conditions is that they face tremendous economic obstacles for their enterprise. Farmers lack training and access to credit to commercialize their products and earn income to support their families. They face roads so full of cavernous bumps it makes New Hampshire frost heaves seem like smooth sailing. By the time farmers manage to get to market, their produce is so bruised that it's near worthless.

As a result, poverty in the rural areas of Ghana skyrockets, with as much as 90 percent of the population living on less than a dollar a day. That's where my work is focused. I'm proud to oversee the U.S. government's partnership with Ghana through a $547 million grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). MCC partners with poor countries, like Ghana, that are committed to good governance, accountability, economic freedom and the empowerment of their citizens.

I think many Granite Staters would agree with MCC's approach: We expect partner countries to lead their development through homegrown ideas and local implementation. This creates sustainable solutions of their own making. We demand practical results that deliver change in the lives of the poor. Such transparency and results-driven accountability ensure the responsible stewardship of U.S. tax dollars.

I can see how the Ghana-MCC partnership is beginning to make a difference for the poor. Road repairs will help farmers reach markets. The first of 60,000 farmers to be trained through MCC programs have learned to think more as business men and women, and banks are giving them credit. Seventy-five schools have been renovated, with hundreds more to be built.

Through MCC-funded training, Barbara Ayisa of Affumkrom, for example, is already benefiting. She expanded her field with new seeds, fertilizer and tools. With the self-sealing plastic bags she received, she can store her maize longer so it can reach markets without rotting. Simple solutions like these to complex problems translate into smarter, practical foreign assistance.

These are the types of solutions witnessed firsthand by a delegation of concerned citizens who recently visited Ghana on a trip led by global anti-poverty groups ONE and Product (RED). New Hampshire's own former U.S. Sen. John Sununu was part of the trip.

Ayisa and thousands like her give me real hope that America's assistance, when invested wisely, can improve the lives of the poorest. As Ghanaians prepare to welcome President Barack Obama, he will see a people determined to build on such assistance to pull themselves and their children out of poverty, for their sakes and for the sake of a more prosperous world we all seek.

New Hampshire native Jim Bednar is the Millennium Challenge Corporation's resident country director, assigned to work with Ghana to implement the MCC grant.