The group call themselves as the "salvage squad". After their sudden termination when foreign assistance faced cuts earlier this year, a team of committed staff decided to launch their own emergency initiative.
Declining to "wallow in misery", an ex-staffer, along with similarly motivated ex-colleagues, began endeavors to preserve some of the crucial projects that were threatened with termination after the funding decreases.
Now, almost 80 projects have been preserved by a matchmaking service managed by the leader and fellow past team members, which has secured them more than $110 million in recent backing. The team behind the resource optimization project initiative estimates it will help 40 million people, encompassing many children under five.
After the termination of operations, spending was frozen, a large workforce was let go, and projects worldwide either stopped abruptly or were barely continuing toward what the leader calls "drop-dead dates".
He and several team members were approached by a philanthropic organization that "sought to figure out how they could make the best use of their limited resources".
They built a menu from the ended initiatives, selecting those "delivering the most life-saving aid per dollar" and where a new funder could realistically get involved and maintain operations.
They soon recognized the requirement was wider than that original organization and began to contact further funding sources.
"We called ourselves the lifeboat crew at the start," says the leader. "The ship has been sinking, and there are too few emergency options for all initiatives to board, and so we're attempting to literally rescue as many young children as we can, get as many on to these rescue options as attainable, via the initiatives that are offering assistance."
The initiative, now working as part of a international policy center, has garnered backing for seventy-nine initiatives on its roster in more than 30 nations. A few have had initial backing restored. A number were not able to be saved in time.
Funding has originated from a mix of non-profit entities and affluent donors. Most choose to be anonymous.
"These donors come from very different motivations and viewpoints, but the shared sentiment that we've encountered from them is, 'I am shocked by what's going on. I truly desire to figure out a way to help,'" notes Rosenbaum.
"I think that there was an 'aha moment' for the entire team as we began operating on this, that this provided an possibility to transition from the passive sadness, remaining in the misery of everything that was unfolding around us, to having a meaningful task to fully engage with."
An example programme that has secured funding through the effort is operations by the Alima to deliver care such as nutritional rehabilitation, maternity services and vital childhood vaccines in the West African nation.
It is crucial to maintain these operations, explains Rosenbaum, not only because reinitiating work if they ceased would be hugely expensive but also because of how much confidence would be forfeited in the conflict-ravaged areas if the group withdrew.
"Alima told us […] 'we are concerned that if we walk away, we may lose our place.'"
Projects with longer-term goals, such as strengthening health systems, or in other fields such as schooling, have been excluded from the initiative's scope. It also does not seek to save the projects indefinitely but to "buy time for the organizations and, honestly, the wider community, to figure out a sustainable answer".
Now that they have obtained backing for every initiative on its original roster, Pro says it will now focus on assisting additional individuals with "established, economical measures".
