Tag: USAID

USAID Library of Project Reports and Evaluations Now Available from Third Parties

By: WHES Board (*Note this post was updated from its original Feb 18, 2025 version to add the two new pages with DEC resources.)

 

American Taxpayers often have questions about how funds for foreign aid work.  In early 2025 there has also been claims — and false information — by Congress and social media about an overall lack of transparency about this aid.

The primary or lead aid agency for the US Government is the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.  In tracking the tens of thousands of projects that have been funded, USAID has maintained a public, transparent, free, easy, searchable database, called the “Development Experience Clearinghouse”, or DEC.   Indeed, World Hunger Education Service has turned to the DEC many times in the last few decades to help provide educational content to the public.

The Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC) is large database of several hundred thousand reports for sharing and accessing USAID-funded technical and program documentation, including reports, evaluations, studies, and other resources related to international development.   Most of the independent rigorous evaluations conducted of USAID activities can be freely download or read from this site.  In addition to serving as a historical record of USAID’s work, it also fosters knowledge sharing about American solutions to problems and technical advances between countries.  There is no comparably comprehensive, one-stop-shop source of information about development insights, for instance by the UN or in Europe or the UN.

Reports on the DEC are typically written by groups implementing programs overseas, including American nonprofits, universities, research groups and other independent specialists or front-line implementers summarizing their programs.

Ironically, during the January/February 2025 period of claims by some Congresspeople that USAID is not transparent, the new Administration shut down the DEC, so that it is no longer accessible for American citizens, including students or Congresspersons, to learn from.  No explanation was given about why the new Administration is blocking transparent access to details about USAID-funded programs.

However, two different independent groups have attempted to recreate the DEC (or at least portions of it) and make it available to the public for free again.

The end of my career in global health

The election of Donald Trump in November 2024 was a gut punch, but I did not know then that the real destruction of the world as I knew it would begin to unfold in January 2025, when Trump began the destruction of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), shuttering almost all of the foreign development assistance that the United States had long led the world in providing.

I have worked in international development assistance for my entire career. I became interested in public health because of a volunteer activity at age 16 when I signed up with a private volunteer organization, Amigos de las Americas, in the summer of 1976 and spent a month in Nicaragua vaccinating children door-to-door with a local Ministry of Health promotor. That experience hooked me on public health, and I spent the next four summers working for Amigos, first as a supervisor of a group of volunteers in Honduras and then three summers in Paraguay. This experience was formative as I learned to speak Spanish fluently and how to deal with mayors, customs officers, and Ministry of Health officials. When I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in international health. I applied and was accepted to the International Health Program of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Hygiene and Public Health.

My Hopkins advisor had received a grant from the Primary Health Care Operations Research (PRICOR) Project, a USAID-funded program to support studies to find ways to improve primary health care (PHC) programs. PRICOR was managed by University Research Co., LLC (URC). The grant was to study community financing of water supply and the Visitadora community health worker program in Brazil. Since I spoke Portuguese, my advisor sent me to Rio de Janeiro to interview one of the principals managing the Visitadora program at the Fundaçāo Serviços Especiais de Saúde Pública (FSESP). In the spring of 1983, I spent a week interviewing FSESP officials and reviewing documents about the program. When I came back from Brazil, I met with my advisor and the PRICOR monitor for the grant, who told me that PRICOR was starting an internship program and encouraged me to apply.

On October 24, 1983, I started at PRICOR as the Spanish-speaking intern, working alongside another recent MPH graduate who spoke French. We supported the staff of five senior scientists at PRICOR who managed funded studies and developed monographs on PHC operations research. As part of the oversight of PRICOR studies, we each accompanied a senior scientist to visit country teams and supported proposal development workshops. After the year-long internship, both of us were offered full-time jobs, and we became involved with other International Division projects and business development activities of URC.

PRICOR I was followed in 1985 by PRICOR II, and PRICOR II by the Quality Assurance Project (QAP) in 1990. I worked on PRICOR II, QAP I, II, and III, working part-time when my children were little. I was fortunate to have pediatrician David Nicholas as my supervisor who was very supportive of family life and flexible working arrangements. This kind of support and my keen interest in the work of QAP and its successor projects made it easy to stay at URC. I went back to work on QAP full-time when my youngest started kindergarten.

When QAP began to focus more on collaborative improvement methods—where purposeful learning among improvement teams is a critical part of the approach—my focus shifted from communication to knowledge management. The inclusion of knowledge management in a project about improving health care was due in large measure to the foresight of Dr. James Heiby, the USAID Project Manager for PRICOR II and QAP.

When QAP was followed by the USAID Health Care Improvement (HCI) Project in 2007, my work increasingly focused on learning from improvement work and creating knowledge products to convey that learning to others. This emphasis on learning and knowledge management became even more important on the USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) Project (2012-2020). When ASSIST was extended in 2016 to support Zika prevention and treatment in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the value of knowledge management became even clearer, since knowledge management focuses on how to learn from our work and apply that learning to have more impact. The last part of ASSIST through June 2020 was perhaps my most impactful development assistance work, since the improvements we supported benefited not only families affected by Zika but also strengthened prenatal care, newborn care, and early child development services for all mothers and children in 13 LAC countries.

The beginning of the end of my career was Trump’s January 21 Executive Order freezing U.S. foreign assistance pending a 90-day review. Then on February 3, Elon Musk announced on X that “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” Under the direction of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, USAID’s headquarters in Washington, DC was closed, over 2,000 USAID staff immediately terminated, and another 4,765 direct hires placed on administrative leave. By early February, USAID contractors and implementing partners, including those providing humanitarian assistance and emergency food relief, began receiving stop-work orders. Some of these contractors and implementing partners then received communication that the stop-work orders were lifted, but then in many cases were contacted again to say the stop-work orders were still in effect. By July 1, most of the 10,000 staff that USAID had worldwide had been terminated, except for a few hundred who were transferred to the State Department to manage what was left of U.S. foreign assistance.

Effectively gutting the USAID workforce meant that actions to issue waivers for lifesaving programs, as the Trump Administration claimed it was doing, or to support the continuance of “approved” programs, were not happening. USAID’s payment system was frozen, and as a result, most contractors and implementing partners like NGOs and universities had not been paid for work they did before the freeze, and most have been forced to lay off staff or even cease operations.

While U.S. Secretary of State Macro Rubio, who appointed himself acting administrator of USAID, repeatedly said he had issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, including food and medical aid, there being no staff left at implementing partners or USAID meant that promises of such waivers were intentionally misleading and untrue. In early March, Rubio announced that 5,200 USAID programs worth over $1.3 billion had been terminated and that about 1,000 USAID programs would be continued, somehow, but administered by the State Department.

The chaotic way in which USAID implementing partners and grantees were notified of the cuts (often, receiving news that the program was cut, then that the program was reinstated, and then cut again) was cruel. USAID staff were locked out of their emails and offices, placed on administrative leave, and eventually terminated.

Having worked for USAID-funded projects for over 40 years, I know firsthand how USAID was a force for good in the world. As a knowledge management practitioner, I have especially admired how USAID has been a champion of learning, both internally within its own operations and externally as a development strategy. USAID encouraged all of its implementing partners to systemically derive key lessons and knowledge products from the work USAID funded and to make them freely available on the USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse.

I have seen over the past decades a continuous push by staff at USAID to do development better—to make the investments of U.S. taxpayer dollars more impactful and more sustainable. USAID’s policy emphasis on localization and locally led development signaled important shifts in how USAID did business—lessons that will likely not be internalized by staff at the Department of State.

Why should Americans care?  For several reasons.  First, USAID, until it was decimated, was the world’s largest provider of food aid, nutritional, health, and humanitarian assistance, saving millions of lives of women and children around the world.  A recent article in the Lancet used rigorous methods to quantify the impact of USAID assistance over the past 20 years and estimated that USAID programs prevented the death of over 30 million children under five and the deaths of over 25 million people living with HIV and of 8 million with malaria. Cancellation of this aid has direct and immediate impact on vulnerable people. Another recently published study in the Lancet estimated the impact over the next five years of eliminating this assistance as:
       • 4.1 million additional AIDS-related deaths
       • 600,000 additional TB-related deaths
       • 2.5 million additional child deaths from other causes
       • 40-55 million additional unplanned pregnancies
       • 12-16 million unsafe abortions
       • 340,000 additional maternal deaths
       • 630,000 additional stillbirths

Second, the destruction of USAID hurts American businesses and farmers. USAID had a well- established strategy to prioritize contracts for small American companies like Rhode Island-based Edesia which manufactures a lifesaving paste for severely malnourished babies. Cancellation of Edesia’s contract not only harmed its 150 employees but also the farmers across 25 states, the U.S. cargo ships Edesia paid to deliver hundreds of metric tons of its therapeutic paste around the world, and finally, to the international organizations that distributed it to malnourished children.

Third, this assistance, proudly branded by USAID as “From the American People”, created good will towards the United States and its citizens. It also contributed to America’s and global health security by fighting infectious diseases and strengthening local capacity to detect and fight scourges like Ebola, Mpox, and Avian flu which continue to be threats to the United States. Wholesale cancellation of support for infectious disease and research on how to prevent and mitigate pandemics makes Americans less safe and more vulnerable.

I know that my situation, having enjoyed a full and meaningful career and being financially secure, is much better than that of most of my colleagues in the U.S. and other countries. Beyond my sadness at the destruction of USAID and the callous way in which the development assistance sector and so many livelihoods and careers were eliminated, I am fearful of the lasting damage inflicted on our country and the world.

*Views expressed represent the author’s views and not those of WHES.

Future of America’s Assistance for Global Health – Roundtable

Hunger Notes joins with other sponsors in convening an expert discussion  on July 17, 2025 about the role of American foreign aid in global health, looking ahead 5+ years.  The Consortium of Universities for Global Health, the Partnership for Quality Medical Donations, the World Hunger Education Service, and George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health are organizing an online (Zoom) roundtable conversation of American public health professionals about how future United States foreign assistance can best promote global health in least developed countries.

It asks about the ongoing battle against the risks of death and illness among children in many lesser developed countries, but also what are new risks that may become disease priorities?  Neglected tropical  diseases or pandemics?

What American research is making a difference or will be in solving emerging problems?  Where are emerging gaps?  Should U.S. government aid target pneumonia, measles, tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition or which other priorities?

What are new opportunities for partnerships?  Which new technologies from America will make a difference?  What are the best roles for U.S. NGOs, networks, drug manufacturers, medical equipment providers and U.S. universities?

Results from this roundtable will be synthesized into a 5-page white paper that will be shared with the U.S. Congress, State Department and media.

Hunger  Notes welcomes your inputs on these issues, as well as questions to be posed.  WorldhungerEd@gmail.com.  Questions can also be addressed to:  ForeignAidRoundtable@gmail.com .

This roundtable is one among a series of similar roundtables organized this year about the future of American foreign aid.

Famine Early Warning System Restarted

Correction & Update:  Hunger Notes reported on March 19 about the cancellation of the important, 40-year-old Famine Early Warning System program, created and funded by USAID.  While true at the time, FEWS NET has been re-established. You can access it here.

The May 2025 prediction report is available here and  reports that “Conflict remains the most severe and widespread driver, particularly in settings with protracted violence or rising geopolitical tensions in East Africa, the Middle East, the Sahel, Central Africa, and Haiti. The  intersection of insecurity, inflation, and limited humanitarian access presents critical concerns across the most affected regions…the residual effects of prior droughts and floods are expected to contribute to food insecurity in parts of southern Africa, eastern Africa, and Afghanistan. Additionally, available weather forecasts suggest rainfall patterns in Sudan, South Sudan, and West Africa may mirror those of 2024, bringing flooding to riverine, wetland, and low-lying areas and dry conditions in the Gulf of Guinea. If this materializes, the resultant loss of cereal crops, cash crops, and livestock will be most acute in areas already impacted by concurrent conflict and economic shocks.”

 

– S Hansch, WHES

Roundtable on June 5 about American Foreign Assistance and Faith-Based Organizations

World Hunger Education Service (the nonprofit overseeing this Hunger Notes site), joins with Fordham University, HIAS, Lipscomb University, and George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health in organizing and convening a virtual (online) roundtable of experts on June 5, 2025, a Thursday,  to discuss how American faith-based organizations may be able to lead in the delivery of foreign aid against poverty, assisting development and providing humanitarian relief.

This will be a roundtable conversation with no panels or presentations, and is open to all faiths.

Invited organizations include operational NGOs, universities, research groups and other faith-based organizations in the United States.

Among the questions the roundtable will discuss are:

  •          How well do faith-based organizations blend donations from different sources (citizens, private sector corporations and foundations) to solve problems and relieve crises? Are they more localized, sustainable and cost-efficient in their assistance?
  •         In which sectors are faith-based organizations best at addressing, comparing for instance hunger, primary health care, basic education, food security, trade, industrialization, governance, marine conservation, or higher education?
  •         Looking ahead to future years, what expanded role should faith-based organizations play in executing new programs funded by the United Statessponsoring organizatons Government?

The roundtable will adhere to “Chatham House” rules in that no quote or perspective will later be attributed to any person or organization, whether in the meeting summary or by anyone attending.  Participants are asked to leave their organizational affiliations “at the door” and speak candidly, as experts, about the issues from their experiences over their careers.

This is one in a series of roundtable about the future of American foreign aid.

Interested faith-based organizations may email to:  WorldhungerEd@gmail.com, or ForeignAidRoundtable@gmail.com

Why the Destruction of USAID Increases Hunger and Harms America

March 21, 2025

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency created by Congress in 1961 to lead America’s development and humanitarian assistance, has been decimated by President Trump’s January 21 Executive Order freezing U.S. foreign assistance.

Why should Americans care? For several reasons. First, USAID, until it was decimated, was the world’s largest provider of food aid, nutritional, health, and humanitarian assistance, saving millions of lives of women and children around the world. While many Americans believe that foreign aid takes a large share of federal spending, in fact this assistance accounts for less than 1% of government spending.

Cancellation of this aid has direct and immediate impact on vulnerable people in low- and middle-income countries. Nicholas Enrich, the acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, who was placed on administrative leave on March 2 for documenting the failure of the Trump administration to follow through on its pledge to allow waivers for lifesaving foreign aid, has written that the consequences of halting $7.7 billion in funding for lifesaving global health programs will lead to the following each year:

  • 5–17.9 million cases of malaria, with an additional 71,000–166,000 deaths;
  • a 28-32% increase in tuberculosis globally;
  • an additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases;
  • more than 28,000 cases of Ebola, Marburg, or related diseases;
  • 17 million pregnant women without access to life-saving services when faced with delivery complications;
  • 11 million newborns not receiving critical postnatal care;
  • 1 million children not treated for severe acute malnutrition.

“USAID’s failure to implement lifesaving humanitarian assistance under the waiver is the result of political leadership at USAID, the Department of State, and DOGE, who have created and continue to create intentional and/or unintentional obstacles that have wholly prevented implementation,” wrote Enrich on Feb. 28. “This will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale.”

Second, the decimation of USAID hurts American businesses, faith-based organizations, and farmers. USAID had a well-established strategy to prioritize contracts for American small businesses like Rhode Island-based Edesia which manufacturers a lifesaving paste for severely malnourished babies. Cancellation of Edesia’s contract not only harmed this business of 150 employees but also the farmers across 25 states, the U.S. ocean liners Edesia paid to ship hundreds of metric tons of its Plumpy’Nut therapeutic paste, and finally, to the international organizations that distributed it to children staving off death.

Third, this assistance, proudly branded by USAID as “From the American People”, created good will towards the United States and its citizens. It also contributed to America’s and global health security by fighting infectious diseases and strengthening local capacity to detect and fight scourges like Ebola, Mpox, and Avian flu which continue to be threats to the United States. Wholesale cancellation of support for infectious disease and research on how to prevent and mitigate pandemics makes Americans less safe and more vulnerable.

Presidential Advisor Elon Musk bragged on X on February 3 that “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” Under the direction of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, USAID’s headquarters in Washington, DC was closed, over 4,000 USAID staff terminated, and another 4,765 direct hires placed on administrative leave.

By early February, USAID contractors and implementing partners, including those providing humanitarian assistance and emergency food relief like Catholic Relief Services and Lutheran World Relief, began receiving stop-work orders. Some of these contractors and implementing partners then received communication that the stop-work orders were lifted, but then in many cases were contacted again to say the stop-work orders were still in effect.

Effectively gutting the USAID workforce means that actions to issue waivers for lifesaving programs, as the Trump Administration claimed it was doing, or to support the continuance of “approved” programs, are not happening. USAID’s payment system is not accessible. As a result, most contractors and implementing partners have not been paid for work they did before the freeze, and many have been forced to lay off and furlough staff or even cease operations.

While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, now the acting administrator of USAID, has repeatedly said he has issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, including food and medical aid, no staff at implementing partners or USAID means promises of such waivers are cruel hoaxes. In early March, Rubio announced that 5,200 USAID programs had been terminated and that about 1000 USAID programs would be continued but administered by the State Department.

In addition to stopping the delivery of food and humanitarian assistance, the Trump Administration also ended the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) which monitored drought, crop production, food prices, and other indicators in order to forecast food insecurity in more than 30 countries. FEWS NET was created following the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, which killed an estimated 400,000 to 1 million people – and caught the world off guard. President Ronald Reagan then challenged USAID to create a system to provide early warning and inform international relief efforts in an evidence-based way. Managed by contractor Chemonics International, FEWS NET employed researchers in the United States and around the world to provide eight-month projections of where food crises will likely emerge. Now, its work to prevent hunger in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and many other countries has been stopped. Amid the aid freeze, FEWS NET has no funding to pay staff in Washington or those working on the ground. The wealth of data that underpinned global analysis of food security – used by researchers around the world and paid for by the American people – has been pulled offline.

Aside from the immediate damage to health and health security that the decimation of USAID poses, the assault on USAID has also removed access to the world’s largest public repository of development assistance documentation, the USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse. A public good paid for by American taxpayers, the Clearinghouse and its thousands of resources are now unavailable. It is clear from the draconian cuts to USAID programs and staff that it is not a priority for the Trump Administration to make development knowledge and information available.

In Memoriam: The US Famine Early Warning System, Known as FEWS, as well as SERVIR

The program which many experts considered to be the most effective at stopping famines and starvation and arguably the single most valuable aid program of all time, has ended its 40 year run of success, as the White House shut it down, alongside hundreds of other global initiatives, without review, discussion or debate.  The “Famine Early Warning System” aka “FEWS” was created to address the longstanding problem that U.S. food aid, which takes months to plan, procure and ship across oceans, kept arriving too late to save lives where there was famine.

FEWS has prevented the deaths of an estimated 10 million children from famine during its tenure.  FEWS played an important role in the decline in famine deaths seen in the last century.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) created FEWS following the late famine relief efforts of the mid 1980s when famine hit Ethiopia, Sudan and the Sahel.  In those famines, US food aid saved many lives, but could have saved more, and prevented mass forced migration (the uprooting of refugees) if food aid had reached those in need at earlier stages of crisis.  The President of Tufts University (in Massachusetts), Dr. Jean Mayer, a nutritionist, proposed a new famine early warning initiative to the head of USAID at the time, and the new program was born.  In the decades since, US food aid became dramatically more effective at addressing emergency food needs in a timely way, in the process saving millions of lives.

From its inception, FEWS cleverly combined data from a range of different sources about local crop production in countries from Somalia to Mali, from Afghanistan to Haiti.  FEWS obtained and compared data from satellite imagery of fields under cultivation, ground visitations, rainfall, local retail prices, surveys of malnutrition, and distress sales by households (an early indicator of intention to migrate).  Its methods elegantly blended insights from markets, biology, climate, and remote sensing.  FEWS brought together contributions from other parts of the government:  including NASA, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NOAA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Various universities including the University of California/Santa Barbara and the University of Maryland also provided critical satellite monitoring and analysis, all under USAID management, backed by networks of field analysts and scientists.  The first American group leading FEWS was Tulane University School of Tropical Medicine.

Graduate courses in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) taught about FEWS as a case study of a successful application of layering information in multi-colored maps to target food aid where it was needed most.  Courses in schools of public health taught about FEWS as well.  Humanitarian aid became a science.

USAID renamed the program “FEWS NET” and funded it to avoid appearance of conflict of interest to inflate food needs through funding appeals.  The cost of FEWS NET has been a small fraction of the value of the humanitarian food aid that USAID distributes. As FEWS matured and became a global network, FEWS NET, it provided ongoing, real-time reporting about a several dozen countries spanning continents and became a mainstay of USAID, being renewed continuously.  FEWS provided guidance not only to US food aid, but food from other donor countries including Canada, Japan, Europe and Australia.  To emphasize this collaboration with other contributing nations, in 2000, the initiative was renamed to Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) to emphasize the importance of collaboration with international and local information systems.

FEWS NET integrated varied data to build the most-likely scenarios to project food insecurity conditions in designated countries four and eight months in advance, indicating where timely humanitarian food aid might save lives and livelihoods.  FEWS NET’s analysis have answered the who, what, where, when and why. FEWS NET also reviews livestock conditions, markets and herder mobility (and fisheries, where important), along with crop conditions.  In recent decades, conflict became the biggest driver of food insecurity due to broken market links, shrinking livelihood options, death or injury of main breadwinners, and population displacement, leading to aid dependence.

No other public source has provided this kind of independent and globally consistent food insecurity intelligence.  FEWS NET briefings to all branches of the US Government, UN and NGO community are well respected and eagerly sought.  FEWS NET also reviewed livestock conditions, markets and herder mobility (and fisheries, where important), along with crop conditions.  In recent decades, conflict became the biggest driver of food insecurity due to broken market links, shrinking livelihood options, death or injury of main breadwinners, and population displacement, leading to aid dependence.

Famines will continue to occur, but prevention and early mitigation and response will be hampered now in the absence of FEWS.

In addition to the termination of FEWS, the USG also terminated other early warning projects, such as SERVIR.  The SERVIR program was a joint initiative of NASA and USAID that leveraged satellite-based Earth observation data to support climate resilience, disaster preparedness, and prevention in poorer countries. Established in 2005, SERVIR’s mission is to “connect space to village,” making NASA’s Earth data accessible for locally-driven environmental and development solutions. SERVIR tracked food security, water resources, weather, land use, and natural hazards.  SERVIR partnered with regional organizations in Amazonia, Eastern and Southern Africa, Hindu Kush Himalaya, Mekong, West Africa, and Central America.

Other sources about the demise of FEWS:   New Humanitarian about Data Streams;  and National Public Radio’s piece.

About Servir, see:     https://nasawatch.com/trumpspace/usaid-erasure-impact-nasa-halts-servir-solicitations/ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20210022715/downloads/Anderson2021_Getting-ahead-of-disaster-impacts-EO-CB_20211015.pdf

Prayer Vigil for Foreign Aid Unites Evangelicals for Aid

A prayer vigil for foreign aid was held March 11, among some 50 Christians, at the Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church, attended by Bread for the World, World Relief, Compassion International, Catholic Relief Services, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, World Renew, Hope International, the Accord Network, and others.

Speakers called on Congress, the Administration and the American people to re-install aid programs serving the hungry around the world.

According to Ministry Watch:  Eugene Cho, president and CEO of  Bread for the World, denounced the “broad, un-targeted cuts” recently implemented at the U.S. Agency for International Development as an assault on vulnerable populations all over the globe.

Questions to Ask about Aid from USAID

The US Government Agency that Brings Aid – USAID

USAID, started in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy.  Estimates are that some 3 billion people in 150 countries have benefited directly from U.S. food assistance      . The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, a part of USAID, identifies food aid      needs in close consultation with foreign governments     .

A common misperception is that the US spends a large percentage of its budget on foreign aid. In reality, it is less than 1% and is widely seen within government as providing some of the most bang for the buck in terms of its return.

The US Administration is asking some good questions of programs across the US government– is this right for America, are we kept safer, does it promote US interests?

As things are continuing to move quickly     , there are some broader questions to ask about USAID in regards to the new administration’s direction.  For example:

  • Are all or most the USAID programs harming US interests?
  • How does humanitarian aid – the supplying of food, water, medicines and other life saving measures – improve the lives of peoples in nearly 130 countries? Is the withdrawal of this aid make us more or less American? That is, does humanitarian aid reflect our values and support to people and countries in need? Is humanitarian aid promoting US interests?
  • Will the abrupt withdrawal of humanitarian aid programs worldwide cause countries to trust America more or less in the future?
  • How will this impact the hundreds of non-profit, non-governmental organizations who have been working with USAID, their operations, their staff and American volunteers, their reach to the most vulnerable, if their resources are cut?
  • Are we more or less safe? Does the trust that other countries have in the USA matter in terms of the overall safety of Americans? Will our adversaries step in and develop relationships with those foreign people’s trust we now might have lost?

These are important and forward-looking questions that should be addressed by government and law makers at this critical time. There are a number of other such questions we should ask.

The good work of USAID in over 100 countries worldwide merits immediate attention and fair review.

Margie Ferris Morris

Former Chairman of the Board, World Hunger Education Service

(Margie worked for decades in the field, as a nutritionist and food expert and has taught about international aid frequently including Tulane and George Washington Universities.

 

USAID Adds Value in Disaster Response, Says Former Hunger Notes Chair

Opinion piece from the former WHES Board Chair:   Most people do not realize what a huge mistake it would be to eliminate the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as appears to be underway here in February 2025.  It would be like throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.  I cannot imagine that either Elon Musk or President Trump are aware of full range of ramifications this elimination would have on the world.  If we as a nation eliminate USAID whole cloth, then all the disaster response and humanitarian efforts including the USAID Disaster Assistance (DART) teams would stop.  I know it has been said that the State Department will maintain emergency food and material aid.  In practical terms it is unclear how that can happen, when staff with institutional memory are gone, grant making ability is gone, and the  DART is gone.

I recently stepped down as Volunteer Board Chair from the World Hunger Education Service (WHES) Board.  WHES was started 50 years ago to inform the US Congress about international hunger issues and needs.  It widened its scope in the internet age beyond Congress to the public at large.

Prior to my role on the Board, I worked 23 years in USAID.  My USAID career was with the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) within USAID. At OFDA, I initially served as a contingency planner and nutrition advisor then as a member of the Senior Management Team and Division Director for the Technical Assistance Division which included all the assistance sectors for disaster relief; Health, Pandemic response, Clean Water and Sanitation, Famine and Nutrition, Volcano and Earthquake risks, Floods and Storm risk, Pestilence, Shelter, Anti-trafficking in persons and Protection of Vulnerables.

Growth of Disasters

OFDA grew as post-cold war disasters and responses around the world became greater.  I was in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, then DR Congo which had a internal war taking place as well as Sudan and Kosovo.  Historically, disaster assistance was modeled on refugee camps; including feeding, shelter, health care, and food distribution.  As internal wars increased, the global number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) became greater than the number of refugees. As a result, humanitarian assistance became more dangerous and more complicated.  I was familiar with refugee assistance; before OFDA, I worked in Cambodian refugee camps on the Thai border; in Cambodia on health programs with World Vision, and the Red Cross and then in UN refugee camps in Congo during the Rwandan genocide.

Operational DART Teams

Until last week, USAID, through OFDA, funded many different non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Catholic Relief Services, International Rescue Committee, and World Vision.  However, USAID, through OFDA, was also operational; it had the ability to send Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DART) to disasters.  The purpose of these teams was to report, to coordinate the US efforts and to fund humanitarian partners.  This was a much better model to keep an eye on the funds, literally in the field.

Another clear advantage was the DART also became a platform for coordination for the whole US Government.  As a DART team leader, I witnessed this on the DART during the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004; The US Navy, Marines, US Air Force reserve, Embassy Jakarta, and USAID all assisted there, in a coordinated effort.  The response dramatically changed Indonesian public opinion of the United States from negative to positive.

I also witnessed this on the 2014-15 DART when the DART platform was used to combat and eventually defeat the Ebola epidemic.  This involved US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USAID, Embassies in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and US Defense Department.

Ramifications

During this aid freeze, NGOs will go bankrupt.  The US Government was the largest single supporter of global disaster response and humanitarian efforts.  In my experience, it has always had bipartisan support, and goodwill from the House and the Senate. It would be a terrible mistake to continue down this destructive path.