Amid the flurry of executive orders President Trump signed on his first day in office was one that called for a 90-day pause and review of all foreign assistance programs. Three months later, that has resulted in the cancellation of thousands of contracts and grants distributed through the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the gutting of the agency’s workforce.
Portland-based Mercy Corps is one of the many organizations that USAID had awarded grants to for the delivery of humanitarian assistance around the world. Mercy Corps says 40 of its 62 programs that were funded through those grants have now been terminated, from a project that would have provided clean drinking water to 12,000 villagers in Afghanistan to health centers in Nigeria that provided lifesaving food and nutrition services to tens of thousands of young children and pregnant women at risk of starvation and malnutrition.
Mary Stata is the chief development officer of Mercy Corps. She joins us to share the scope and human toll of the terminated programs and the future of international humanitarian aid without U.S. government support.
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