The US Agency for International Development (aka USAID) was the world’s largest supporter of humanitarian aid and programmes to eliminate poverty and hunger around the globe.
But now billions of dollars of its funding to help the poorest people on the planet has been frozen or stopped entirely.
Why are we doing a crowdfunder?
When the freeze to USAID was announced, we knew things would be bad. But nobody could have predicted the severity and cruelty of the cuts that have been made. As so often happens in situations like this, it’s children who are paying the price for the heartless decisions of adults.
Our work supporting children in India lost its funding overnight, and is at risk of having to stop completely.
And our team in Rwanda is also having to step in to support other services whose funding has been frozen, including providing emergency care for abandoned newborn babies.
So we’re launching a crowdfunder to try and support their work, and the work of our teams around the world who are also going to feel the effects of these aid cuts in ways we can’t predict yet.
Our FCDO campaign
You’ve probably noticed that we’ve just finished one big fundraising drive – our Aid Match campaign with the UK Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO). So you might wonder why we’re now launching a crowdfunder too.
The truth is, we didn’t believe that cuts to USAID would be made at such a huge and heartless scale. Sadly, we were wrong.
And that means that right now the children and communities we work with need all the help they can get.
An urgent response
These USAID cuts and freezes affect charities all over the world. Many will have to cut back on the services they provide. Some may not even survive. In turn this will put more strain on our services, as they’ll have to step up to fill in the gaps in support that appear.
Usually the money donated through our fundraising supports the day-to day running of our services and the creation of new ones. This crowdfunder aims to give us the ability to respond urgently to unexpected issues that arise as a result of these aid cuts, and try to maintain support for those who need it the most.
We want to make sure that the most vulnerable get the support they need as the fallout from these cuts becomes clearer.
If you’d like to support us to do that, you can donate to the crowdfunder here.
*Names have ben changed to protect identities.
