Save the Children official says Trump’s ‘disorderly’ aid cuts are devastating its work

Amna Nawaz:

Nick, you mentioned the humanitarian impact as well. What are people telling you about that?

Nick Schifrin:

Devastating.

And to understand just how devastating, we spoke to Janti Soeripto, the president and CEO of Save the children U.S.

And I started by asking her, what has been the impact on children around the world?

Janti Soeripto, President and CEO, Save the Children: The impact has been devastating on millions of children around the world. And now — and we're talking about impact today, not in some theoretical tomorrow.

We're talking about literacy programs, education programs for young children being shuttered. I was in the DRC last year. I saw this amazing program funded by USAID that helped children who could not identify single litter in the alphabet,and,within eight weeks, they were able to read each other a story, explain the story to each other. These are 8-to-10-year-olds.

That program is terminated. More than 20,000 kids do not have access to that level of education anymore. And that is just a small example of the more than 100 programs that have been terminated for Save the Children alone.

Nick Schifrin:

And for those in the United States government today who argue that it just shouldn't be in the U.S. interest to go into the DRC or any random country and educate children, what would be your response?

Janti Soeripto:

It is a phenomenal return on investment. It is less than 1 percent of the federal budget. We firmly believe that development and humanitarian assistance across the world ultimately helps countries be safer and more stable and more prosperous.

And that, in turn, also is better for the United States and for all other countries that are a development partner.

Nick Schifrin:

What has been the impact of how the United States government has gone about these changes?

Janti Soeripto:

We have been expecting and we were well up for a proper strategic review of how aid gets distributed globally. It happens not just in the United States. It happens with other countries. So that is perfectly fine.

The disorderly manner in which this has happened, I think, has been wasteful, cruel, particularly to vulnerable children, but also really chaotic. We have food lying in warehouses, food and medicine lying in warehouses already at the location, but we're still not able to distribute it. That's perishable goods across the movement.

We have to explain to communities that we're withdrawing potentially from stabilization centers where we treat severely malnourished children, children who will die if we withhold that treatment for a couple of days. How do you explain to a mom that her child, which is clinging to life just for this very cheap, efficient, effective treatment, that we're going to just rip it out without any form of transition or handover?

Nick Schifrin:

Publicly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his staff said that there were waivers in place for lifesaving food and aid. They have also identified publicly quite a few programs that they said that they had saved.

What was your ability to apply for those waivers? What was the communication back from the United States government? And how has that impacted this story?

Janti Soeripto:

This has been quite a manmade crisis. So we received stop-work orders to stop everything. Then we did receive exemptions for lifesaving activities. It's been left to organizations themselves to interpret what exactly that lifesaving meant.

In most of those cases, Save the Children has been able to continue that lifesaving work, even though we have not been paid for any of the work we did in December or January or for that work that we're continuing. It's, in fact, very hard to find people to actually give you an answer. And some of those people who are there are also telling us that they don't know what kind of answers to give.

We have received exemptions. Then we received terminations for those exemptions. Then we asked, what does that mean? Then we received rescissions of those terminations. So, in the end, all that said and done, the lifesaving activities for which we sought exemptions, we ultimately have received still those exemptions for, but we have not been paid in order to do them.

So we're pre-financing the U.S. government.

Nick Schifrin:

A lot of your colleagues in similar locations or similar positions have not been willing to give us interviews. Why are you willing to talk publicly?

Janti Soeripto:

Save the Children has been phenomenal — has been incredibly grateful for the support it has received from the American public for — since 1932 and from the United States government, and we hope that that will certainly come back in some form or another.

At the same time, we have also found that there seems to be a lot of unawareness from people based in D.C. of what the real-life implications are of these choices. And I can't believe that it is intentional that children would die because we do such a disorderly withdrawal. So we wanted to make sure that those real consequences are made very clear.

And Save the Children is also there to give a voice to those communities.

Nick Schifrin:

And that was president and CEO of Save the Children U.S., Janti Soeripto.