When the Trump administration issued its January 20 executive order announcing that it was freezing all U.S. foreign development assistance—funding that typically accounts for about a third of Save the Children’s annual global program budget—our senior team was already gathered for a previously planned in-person retreat. Together, we quickly moved through every stage of grief, working towards resilience in international aid.

First, denial: Was it even possible for a U.S. president to deny funds appropriated by Congress? Second, anger: How could the administration be so cruel as to cut off food, medicine, and education from children in need? Third, bargaining: Could we litigate or negotiate to get some of the money back? Fourth, depression: In the absence of U.S. aid, would we be able to continue our work? Finally, acceptance: We couldn’t avoid or reverse this massive crisis, but we would stay calm, creative, and agile—and eventually navigate our way through it.

The ensuing days were chaotic as we tried to understand what the initial directive and subsequent ones meant for our operations, and how to rebuild resilience in international aid. What started as a 90-day pause on and review of all U.S. aid became, on January 24, a U.S. State Department suspension of all existing programs except for emergency food assistance and military aid to Egypt and Israel. Four days later, the exemptions were extended to “humanitarian programs that provide life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance.”

We quickly created a global, cross-functional task force to plan for various scenarios to rebuild resilience in international aid. Of the $400 million that Save the Children U.S. had expected to receive from the U.S. government and then distribute to our colleagues and partners who are feeding, vaccinating, and teaching kids around the world, how much would be left? At that time, we thought the best case would be 70%; the worst (and ultimately more accurate) was 20%. We evaluated all our programs against the administration’s criteria for work eligible to continue, and then our financial teams determined how to stretch our cash reserves to sustain as many programs as possible for as long as possible, considering that at that point we hadn’t been paid for work already finished (although we have been since).

Read the full article about resilience in international aid by Janti Soeripto at Global Washington.