Anonymous donor will match all donations up to $250,000 made by June 30
When the Trump administration announced plans to close the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. government’s main agency for administering civilian foreign aid, a delegation of Alongside Hope staff were in Kenya—allowing them to see the resulting “havoc” firsthand, communications director Janice Biehn says.
The four staff members from Alongside Hope—the Anglican Church of Canada’s main relief and development agency, formerly known as the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund—were checking on refugee resettlement efforts with partner Church World Service (CWS) at the Nyarugushu Refugee Camp in Tanzania. The U.S. government had previously supplied 88.5 per cent of CWS funding, according to the latter’s financial records. Alongside Hope staff, Biehn says, witnessed the “chaos and disappointment and shock waves that were going through” CWS, which had to lay off 750 employees in response to the cuts.
The Alongside Hope delegation asked how they could help, and were told that 10 families set to be resettled had left the camp to immigrate to United States. But with the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), Biehn says, “Everything was pulled out from under them and they had to go back to the camp and rebuild again, having sold all their things, having left their home.”
To help these 10 refugee families and others affected by aid cuts, Alongside Hope launched the Resilience Fund in early April, which aims to support the agency’s programs and partners impacted by the loss of USAID and other funding sources.
An anonymous Alongside Hope donor has offered to match all donations up to $250,000 made by June 30. As of May 23, the Resilience Fund had raised $128,163 of its $250,000 target. Donations can be made at alongsidehope.org/resilience-fund.
“We really felt we needed to respond to support our partners,” Biehn says of the Resilience Fund. The name, she says, was inspired by a conversation with CWS relief development and protection director Mary Conceptor Obiero: “In the midst of all this chaos and uncertainty, she said that they were resilient and that they would find a way forward.”
Resilience Fund ‘has not only saved lives but has also restored them’
The Resilience Fund will provide immediate relief to the families who were turned back from the United States and forced to return to Nyarugushu Refugee Camp, as well as psychological and social support for other refugees who had planned to resettle in the U.S and are now unable to do so.
Hamedi Msofe, CWS project manager for relief development and protection in the region, says the Resilience Fund has been instrumental in helping CWS sustain and adapt its program at Nyarugushu Refugee Camp following the suspension of USRAP, which left more than 6,000 refugees in “profound uncertainty and distress.”
The Resilience Fund, he says, allowed CWS to offer community-based counselling sessions, training for refugee peer counsellors and community workers, and establishment of safe spaces for youth and women.
“The Resilience Fund is not merely beneficial; it is indispensable,” Msofe says. He recalled the example of a woman who came close resettlement twice, first in 2018 and then in 2024. Having completed all steps required including cultural orientation and medical checks, she was awaiting her flight to the United States in December 2024. Lacking income in the camp, the woman had borrowed more than $2,500 to prepare for life in the United States, planning to repay the debt after arriving there and gaining work.
Washington’s abrupt suspension of all resettlement flights, Msofe says, put the woman in a state of despair and financial distress. She told him, “I felt like I was going to hell. The people who lent me money wanted it back, and I had no way to repay them. I even thought of ending my life to escape the shame and sorrow. But then you came. You listened. You gave me hope. Now, I will talk to the person I owe and try to find a way. I’m still here because someone cared.”
Msofe adds, “This is just one of many stories that illustrate the profound impact of the Resilience Fund. It has not only saved lives but has also restored them.”
Toronto parish raises more than $16,300 in Lenten fundraising campaign
Prior to the formal establishment of the Resilience Fund or the donor’s offer to match donations, Little Trinity Church in Toronto launched a fundraising campaign to help support two of the refugee families.
“In early February, we were really wrestling, as a staff team, with all the awful things going on in the world,” says the Rev. Karen Koiter, Little Trinity’s associate priest and justice animator. “We took that to prayer … We ended up deciding that … there’s a place for anger and there’s a place for frustration, but it spurs us more into our identity as Christians to love and to act for justice. So we decided to give the congregation opportunities to do that.”
Koiter reached out to Jackie Koster, Alongside Hope’s director of programs and partnerships who had been part of the Kenya delegation, and asked if Alongside Hope had any partners who were hurt by USAID cuts. When Biehn informed her of the refugee families from Tanzania, Little Trinity set a goal of raising $10,000 for two of the families over Lent, or $5,000 each.
In the end, the congregation raised $16,387. Koiter recalls, “We advertised in our parish newsletter and said, ‘Here are the things that we want to do in Lent as an approach to the world, because the world is so heartbreaking right now—but we are not helpless. Here’s how we can stand up as a Christian community and do something about it.’”
“It was actually really easy to raise the money because people were so grateful to have something positive that they could do,” she adds.
Supporting local food production to address child malnutrition in Burundi
Another Alongside Hope partner impacted by the USAID cuts is Village Health Works in Burundi, which lost almost $1 million in funding that provided HIV, tuberculous and malaria medication as well as treatments to prevent malnutrition in children.
The Resilience Fund will help support local production in Kigutu, Burundi of Magara Meza—a peanut butter-like supplement made from peanuts, soy, and powdered milk that contains vital nutrients and is often used to treat and prevent malnutrition in children. Burundi has one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world according to the UN, with 54 per cent of children under the age of five suffering from stunted growth due to malnutrition.
Local production of Magara Meza, Biehn says, “solves two issues. It makes it much easier to get the product to the little children who need it, but without having to be dependent on an international supply chain. Then it also creates jobs for not just the people working in the production facility, but the farmers who are going to be selling the peanuts.”
Deogratias Niyizonkiza, founder and CEO of Village Health Works, thanked Alongside Hope for their support in a YouTube video posted May 22 by the latter.
“I cannot tell you how excited I am to be building this collaboration with Alongside Hope,” Niyizonkiza said. “To be able to produce our own peanut porridge is so important to addressing the issue of malnutrition that has been decimating the children of Burundi.
“Whenever there’s a problem, it can be—the way I see it—an opportunity to come up with a lasting solution. This collaboration will really change a lot the ways we used to do things. Relying on what is produced locally and what is grown locally is just the way it is supposed to be done.”
Funding shortfall affects multiple countries
International aid cuts have also affected Alongside Hope partners in other countries. In Kenya, many children are now unable to access life-saving anti-retroviral medications or attend school, with National Council of Churches Kenya laying off 42 staff members who had provided youth mentorship programs and support for school fees.
In Mozambique, aid cuts have shut down a five-year development project of Alongside Hope partner EHALE, which sought to improve maternal health services and health-care access for young mothers. In Haiti, the charity Rayjon Share Care has been unable to provide medical services and referrals due to cuts at hospitals that had been supported by USAID.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the non-profit Panzi Foundation has abandoned plans for a project to support women recovering from gender-based violence, which has soared amid the ongoing war between the Congolese state and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel paramilitary group. “It’s a very challenging environment for women to be working in and trying to recover from sexual assault and rape and then make it back into the community and be whole again,” Biehn says of the Congo.
While Alongside Hope is currently focused on using the Resilience Fund to make up for the funding shortfalls in Tanzania and Burundi, Biehn says, “We’re always looking for our partners to indicate to us where we can support them. So I’m sure that there will be other partners coming forward.”
Note: A previous version of this article referred to the supplement in Kigutu as DuhindukeNut; the name was changed after early development to Magara Meza. Karen Koiter reached out to Jackie Koster, not Janice Biehn; incorrect information was provided to the Journal. EHALE is a partner organization of Alongside Hope, not the name of the project that was shut down.
