Colorado organization that supplies aid to other countries looks ahead without U.S. Government
In the aisles where supplies are stacked on shelves reaching for the high ceiling of a huge warehouse in Colorado, volunteers kept at it this week at Project Cure.
"I've been doing this since 2012," said Samantha Stanley. "Project Cure works on more sustainability than just handouts."
The large non-profit has warehouses in Colorado, Arizona and Texas, at which they collect medical supplies to ship overseas. They provide about 200 truckloads of supplies per year. The number of volunteers is in the thousands.
In February, Project Cure was one of the aid organizations to get contracts with the US Government dropped.
"Everybody got a stop work order, that just meant if you're doing foreign aid work with USAID, you're done," said Dr. Douglas Jackson, CEO and President of Project Cure. "That was a bad day for a lot of people, including us. Because you don't know what's going to happen. So we probably lost a couple million dollars of projects through that whole process."
That has been followed up in recent weeks by further filtering of the work of USAID.
"We are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID," tweeted Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X this week. "The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States."
"There are people in this country that don't necessarily agree with or appreciate foreign aid. My job is not to change their mind. My job is to change the world and so our commitment is we're going to continue to do that," said Jackson.
The organization has not joined lawsuits seeking to stop the actions taken by the Trump Administration. "Our margins are too thin," said Jackson. A court has ordered that the government pay for work already completed, some of which is owed to Project Cure and contractors.
The cessation of government support for projects done by organizations like Project Cure brings up the question of American values.
"What about caring for somebody, because they live and breathe and live on this planet the same as we do. There's something to that still and I hope that in this conversation somebody sticks their hand up and says, wait a second, there still is something there," said Jackson.
Their shipments as well as the sharing of medical staff overseas has extended from the Americas to Africa, to Asia, to Europe.
They have sent almost 185 different shipments into Ukraine.
"We shipped about $20 million from 1993 until the war started, explained Jackson. "Since the war started we've done almost $60 million of relief to Ukraine. And that's wholesale." They will continue.
Overall, Project Cure does about $100 million in work annually. Federal money is about 2%.
"There's a lot of people doing some soul searching right now about what are your core values? What is it that is important to us as Americans?" he asked.
There are questions about what good foreign aid has done for the United States. The Trump administration seems to be looking for a better return on investment. But Jackson believes there's more to it, noting foreign aid is about one percent of the federal budget.
"Has it bought overwhelming democracy? Absolutely not. And I think that may be part of the criticism. If that's your ROI, if you're going to measure how many democracies did we do by the amount of foreign aid dollars that we give? It's a mixed bag."
He vows to forge ahead and Project Cure will not change any of its mission.
"It's frustrating, yeah. Does it make me angry? It makes me more determined."
