When Laura I., a senior nutrition adviser contracted through the Public Health Institute, came in to work on Jan. 28, she did not expect it to be her last day at the U.S. Agency for International Development. The notice to stop work came mid-morning, with a slow wave of termination emails following throughout the day.
Laura was one of thousands of contractors caught in one of the most significant drawdowns of U.S. foreign aid staffing in decades, a move that resulted in the dismissal of all but a fraction of the entire USAID workforce.
The hardest part wasn’t losing her job, Laura said. “The hardest part of this [is] we’re watching everything get destroyed … decades of work that has seen real improvements … and watching that just get decimated with utter disregard for the people who are going to die,” she said, describing how all the projects the health bureau were working on have been discontinued.