Life-saving medical care in jeopardy as USAID cancels contracts with Minneapolis agency

Minneapolis-based Alight is in the business of keeping severely malnourished children in Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan alive.

That work is in jeopardy after the Trump administration canceled three contracts as part of a sweeping effort to dismantle international aid programs that fall outside the President’s “America First” agenda. The administration has slashed more than 90 percent of USAID’s efforts, including the three managed by Alight.

On Thursday, USAID workers carted the contents of their desks out of the closed headquarters in Washington, D.C., as children in remote, high-conflict areas of North and East Africa faced the prospect of losing access to life-saving nutrition services.

An end to their care could lead to death in just hours, and Alight spokeswoman said. The organization is now looking for ways to prevent that from happening.

Alight CEO Jocelyn Wyatt spoke to MPR News host Cathy Wurzer about the agency’s work.

The transcript below has been edited lightly for length and clarity. Click on the audio player above to hear the conversation. Editor’s note: Alight is an underwriter of NPR News.

If Alight is not feeding these kids, who might?

I don’t know that anyone’s going to be able to honestly. The challenge here is that Alight works in places like Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan, where there aren’t other existing services, and the grants that we received from the U.S. government through USAID were truly the only support that provided this type of emergency nutrition services for severely and acutely malnourished children under the age of 5. 

Critics of these programs might ask, ‘Why should the U.S. spend billions of dollars in aid when the governments of these countries can’t take care of their own people?’ What’s your response?

I do think the U.S., like many developed countries, has an obligation and a commitment to support those around the world that are the most needy and that need our support.

Organizations like Alight have a mission and a commitment to serving our customers around the world, and so we receive many different types of sources of funding, whether those are from the U.S. government or other governments, United Nations agencies and our private citizens and corporations and foundations.

That said, when the U.S. government immediately requires us to terminate our services, we just don’t have the time to be able to secure funding from other sources in order to be able to continue those services. 

Tell me about the logistics of having to quickly dismantle a program like this. What’s happening out there?

It’s been really challenging. We first received the notifications of suspension a little over a month ago, on Jan. 24 when the U.S. government ordered a full scale suspension of all foreign assistance, including emergency humanitarian aid.

We then received a waiver a few days later from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which allowed Alight and other organizations to be able to continue to deliver the life-saving services, which meant that we were able to continue operating for about the next month in Sudan and Somalia.

However, as of two days ago, we received termination letters for our programs in Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan, which meant that we had to immediately close the doors of our health clinics, of our feeding centers.

We had to terminate between 600 and 800 front line staff around the world, and honestly, the medicines and medical supplies that could really be used to save lives and to help people are sitting shuttered in the health clinics that remain closed right now.

Is there any way that some of the people that you’re serving in these areas of the world could get help from other organizations? 

The places that we’re working, particularly in these three countries, Alight is often the only service provider in terms of providing health or nutrition support, water and sanitation services, and protection for women and children in these communities.

Honestly, aid has already been so scarce in these countries and in the regions where we work. These are places with high levels of conflict — very, very remote communities. Already Alight staff has to cross rivers with backpacks over their heads filled with medical supplies in order to reach health clinics, or ride bicycles or walk to the very far, remote villages where we’re serving our customers.

And so no, I don’t believe that there are other alternatives in the communities where Alight is operating, particularly in these three countries, and so people will go without health services. Kids will go without this emergency feeding. We will not be providing water and sanitation services in camps for refugees and internally displaced people.

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