A Shock­wave of This Magni­tude Unlike Anything Witnessed Before

What are the key prio­ri­ties of your new strategy?

Our stra­tegy runs on a five-year cycle. At the end of the last cycle, I reviewed the goals of the previous two stra­te­gies and reali­zed that we hadn’t made much progress on diver­si­fy­ing our funding sources. At the same time, we obser­ved a clear trend: the decline of govern­ment and insti­tu­tio­nal funding.

So you adapted the new stra­tegy accordingly?

Yes, the stra­te­gic plan­ning was driven by chan­ges in our opera­ting envi­ron­ment. There are more conflicts, but fewer resour­ces for the huma­ni­ta­rian sector. It’s not that there’s less money over­all — but prio­ri­ties have shifted. Less funding is flowing to huma­ni­ta­rian organizations.

It’s not that there’s less money over­all — but prio­ri­ties have shifted. Less funding is flowing to huma­ni­ta­rian organizations.

_{Anne Reit­sema, CEO of Medair}

Can you quan­tify this decline?

Experts esti­mate it is around 40 percent. So now we still need to find those who remain willing to support huma­ni­ta­rian work, stand along­side people in crisis, and seek to make a posi­tive impact. Secu­ring new funding is a major focus of Medair’s new stra­tegy. At the same time, we clari­fied our mandate — what we deli­ver emer­gency relief:  health, nutri­tion, shel­ter and water, inte­gra­ted life-saving programs. But all these acti­vi­ties are point­less if we can’t deli­ver that “last mile”.

What do you mean by the last mile?

For exam­ple, it is crucial that every child recei­ves a proper diagno­sis and the right medi­ca­tion. If that final step fails, ever­y­thing else – all the funding, all the trai­ning, all the infra­struc­ture – is wasted. That’s why we’ve placed a strong focus on impro­ving the quality of the last mile assis­tance reaching each child in need. There’s an inno­va­tive rese­arch compo­nent to it, in that we actively grapple with areas of the sector that need more reflec­tion about how to deli­ver aid more effec­tively and effi­ci­ently. When you have clarity about your work, you can better commu­ni­cate impact, which is crucial for secu­ring new funding. We’re streng­thening how we package our programs, from acti­vity-based coun­try programs, or thema­tic approa­ches, to attract diffe­rent funding streams and donors inte­res­ted in stan­ding along­side vulnerable people.

The U.S. has drasti­cally redu­ced its funding. How did that affect you?

The U.S. decis­ion crea­ted huge uncer­tainty across the huma­ni­ta­rian sector. We had previously recei­ved signi­fi­cant funding from the U.S., for which we’re very grateful. It allo­wed us to operate in regi­ons with the grea­test needs. It wasn’t only direct U.S. funding: UN funding tied to U.S. contri­bu­ti­ons was also affec­ted. We hadn’t fully reali­zed how depen­dent those streams were on U.S. support until the pause and subse­quent revi­si­ons hit. And the cuts didn’t stop there: other major donors were simul­ta­neously shrin­king their huma­ni­ta­rian budgets.

How did you respond?

By the end of Janu­ary, it was clear to the leader­ship that we would need to reduce our port­fo­lio. The budget appro­ved by our board in Decem­ber was no longer valid. Fort­u­na­tely, as an emer­gency response NGO, we are built to be agile. We constantly deal with crises, so we shifted into crisis manage­ment mode. We asses­sed how sever­ely the cuts would affect us and deci­ded to reduce our program port­fo­lio by 25 percent and our over­head costs by 30 percent. We knew we had to act fast. The longer you spend money you don’t have, the grea­ter the cuts you’ll have to make later. I’m grateful for how unified the orga­niza­tion was during this process. We didn’t just cut where funding had stop­ped – we went back and reas­ses­sed our priorities.

Still, 2026 will not be an easy year for the sector. 

That must have been a lot of extra work.

Yes. We exami­ned the impli­ca­ti­ons of stop­ping each project. If a project was vital for the most life-saving acti­vi­ties, we reached out to our donors to ask whether we could real­lo­cate funds. That requi­red a great deal of work — rewri­ting propo­sals and revie­w­ing and modi­fy­ing budgets – but it was the right approach, cent­red around the lives of the people we serve. Keeping that vision and passion front and centre has been a real source of inspi­ra­tion for me, and a source of hope in a time when it’s easy to feel hopeless.

Has the situa­tion stabi­li­zed since then?

We can see that the trend of redu­ced funding conti­nues. Howe­ver, we’ve been able to stabi­lize the orga­niza­tion. Still, 2026 will not be an easy year for the sector. We’re confi­dent as we plan our funding, but even if our orga­niza­tion itself isn’t at risk, we’re deeply concer­ned and asking: what happens to the mother trying to care for a sick child in an area where health faci­li­ties have been forced to close? We dont yet have the full picture of how many faci­li­ties have closed globally across the huma­ni­ta­rian sector — but in Afgha­ni­stan alone, over 500 health centers have had to close their doors this year.

Crises in the field are part of your daily work. But have you ever seen such a shift in funding before?

No. The sector has never expe­ri­en­ced a shock­wave of this magni­tude. The scale of this shift is seis­mic — like an earth­quake. The worst part is that as funding decrea­ses, orga­niza­ti­ons try to become more effi­ci­ent. That might work tempo­r­a­rily, but in the end, the impact of the funding cuts will outweigh those gains. It will become far more expen­sive to respond to new crises. We’re losing know-how and infra­struc­ture. As things close in areas of high need, we lose invest­ment cost. In South Sudan, where huma­ni­ta­rian orga­niza­ti­ons had to with­draw, we saw a severe food shortage just one and a half months later. Restart­ing those programs will cost much more.

How are local commu­ni­ties respon­ding to these developments?

Working with commu­ni­ties is essen­tial for us. Commu­ni­ca­tion is key. We make sure we talk to the right people, respect tradi­tio­nal leader­ship struc­tures, and include women’s groups, elders, and young people. It’s important that we all under­stand what’s happe­ning, so that we can navi­gate this crisis together.

I expec­ted more anger, given that the inter­na­tio­nal huma­ni­ta­rian commu­nity is leaving them behind.

How do you streng­then that resilience?

I was in South Sudan at the end of August. We explai­ned to them that we had to phase out paid posi­ti­ons and rely more heavily on volun­teer work and redu­ced team sizes. We infor­med them which acti­vi­ties we would conti­nue because they have the grea­test life-saving impact.

Were there any nega­tive reactions?

I expec­ted more anger, given that the inter­na­tio­nal huma­ni­ta­rian commu­nity is leaving them behind.

But that wasn’t the case?

We have inves­ted heavily in commu­ni­ca­tion. I atten­ded one gathe­ring and witnessed their grief as they thought we would have to with­draw. A repre­sen­ta­tive of a women’s group than­ked Medair for the support they had recei­ved. She said that without our help, many of the women and child­ren would not be alive today. They were grateful because we had stood by them through multi­ple crises. She expres­sed that, showed them how much we actually love them. That touched me deeply and it showed that they value not only our work but also us as people. It moti­va­ted me to think very carefully about where and how we exit. We’ve reached out to private donors to secure addi­tio­nal funding that would allow us to, where neces­sary, phase out more gradu­ally and coor­di­nate the tran­si­tion with the community.

We must remem­ber that those affec­ted by crises are not to blame for their situation.

Do local commu­ni­ties conti­nue to play a central role in your current strategy?

Abso­lut­ely. They’re indis­pensable. They know far better how to cope with their crisis, because they’ve been living through it long before we arri­ved. We estab­lish a dialo­gue with them — it brings people toge­ther and multi­plies the impact.

How does that work in practice?

Commu­ni­ties are encou­ra­ged to parti­ci­pate actively and tell us what they can contri­bute them­sel­ves. In South Sudan, I saw how we star­ted with commu­nity leaders and a repre­sen­ta­tive group. They shared what steps they had alre­ady taken to improve the nutri­tion and health of their commu­nity. That’s far more effec­tive than simply flying ever­y­thing in. And because they felt owner­ship, they also protec­ted the supplies them­sel­ves — we had no issues with theft. In Ukraine, when plan­ning shel­ters for displa­ced people, we calcu­la­ted what we could build with our resources.Then we sat down for an hour with the  people displa­ced by the conflict— some were craft­smen — they wanted to parti­ci­pate and toge­ther we were able to prepare accom­mo­da­ti­ons for twice as many people. This shows that the value of a huma­ni­ta­rian orga­niza­tion is not defi­ned by the size of its budget, but by how many people it can help effec­tively. We must remem­ber that those affec­ted by crises are not to blame for their situa­tion. Any of us could find oursel­ves vulnerable in a crisis.  Exten­ding gene­ro­sity and show­ing care for each other is a beau­tiful thing.  It gives hope in the midst of diffi­cul­ties. We all need that at times, don’t we?

Learn more about commu­nity enga­ge­ment in Medair’s video.