Earlier this week, Edesia was one month away from considering shutting down its factory.
For years, the Rhode Island nonprofit has manufactured lifesaving peanut paste for starving children, working alongside a Georgia-based counterpart, Mana Nutrition, to ship that product across the world.
But over the last few months, the crumbling of the U.S. Agency for International Development — which funds much of their work — has meant contract cancellations, reversals of those cancellations, and delays for both companies, resulting in hundreds of thousands of boxes idling in their warehouses.