‘People Are Already Dying’: The Spiritual Crisis Behind U.S. and U.K. Foreign Aid Cuts

After abrupt cuts to foreign aid in the United States and United Kingdom at the start of 2025, faith leaders feared such measures were just the beginning of a larger realignment of the longstanding collaboration between Western governments and religious groups to deliver humanitarian aid, partner in peacebuilding and support development across the globe.

The more immediate concern, aid workers in sub-Saharan Africa told the Fetzer Institute, was because cuts were so sudden, local governments and on-the-ground organizations had little-to-no time to prepare.

The impact, they shared, was instantaneous and brutal.

Clinical trials investigating the cross-border spread of infectious diseases in Kenya came to an overnight halt. A peace agreement that brought an end to a 40-year conflict in southern Senegal that had U.S. government funding baked in is no longer certain to hold. Communal kitchens in war-torn Sudan were no longer able to offer food in the midst of war-induced famine.

The full force of the funding cuts was directly devastating, said Barbara Njenga, who works in health research and development in Kenya.

Because of sub-Saharan Africa’s existing vulnerabilities, the effect was that much more severe. Of the 20 poorest countries on earth, 19 are in sub-Saharan Africa. Among them, seven rely on U.S. aid dollars to cover over a fifth of their assistance — South Sudan, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Njenga cited numerous examples of that impact, from the lack of funding for critical HIV research, cuts to maternal and child health programs as well as school-based nutrition schemes and the reduction of surveillance programs to monitor potential outbreaks of diseases like Ebola. She also cited the economic vulnerabilities, with numerous workers losing their jobs and the knock-on effect that can have on families and communities.

“In one neighborhood near Kisumu [a city in western Kenya], there were numerous health programs supported by the U.S. government,” said Njenga. “On a recent visit, it was almost like a ghost town because so many NGO offices were shut down.

People are already dying, said Njenga, and even if funding is restored, much of the pain caused by cuts might be irreversible or irredeemable.

A woman living with HIV or a mother with a terminally ill child or a family with no income can pray to God or beseech religious organizations for aid – but without funding, they still die, she said.

“It is a wakeup call for African nations to think outside of the box to meet our needs.”

Not only are religious organizations stepping into the gap created by aid cuts to provide emergency services and support, they are also providing spiritual succor and searching for deeper, more divine, intimations in the midst of the devastation.

How a Group of Muslim Ladies is Enhancing Approaches to Domestic Violence in Barbados

“Everything in my life is Allah’s work,” says Sakina Bakharia as she sits, sipping on an iced mocha, at a café across from Rockley Beach in Barbados.

Bakharia is buzzing, not only from the coffee but because of a successful 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign her organization, the Barbados Association of Muslim Ladies (BAML), was part of. Running from Nov. 24 to Dec. 10 each year, the initiative raises awareness about domestic and gender-based violence on the island.

Domestic violence is a widespread and urgent issue in the Eastern Caribbean. Prevalent for years, a March 2024 report noted a further 21 percent rise in domestic violence cases in Barbados from the previous year — likely underestimated, given a 30 percent spike in calls to crisis hotlines in the same year.

That is why, at the 2024 launch of Barbados’ 16 Days of Activism — an event that included BAML and other advocates — Tonya Haynes, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, did not mince words. “We live in a world where going to work or walking home from school have proven to be deadly activities for women and girls,” she said.

Her warning was not hyperbolic. She noted that Barbados reports rape rates above the global average and that half of all Barbadian women will experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. “Intimate partner violence, sexual violence, child sexual abuse, and other forms of gender-based violence are daily occurrences in Barbados,” she said, emphasizing that programs like the 16 Days campaign demand we pay attention to those realities.

BAML began in 2010 when Firhaana Bulbulia, now UNICEF’s Eastern Caribbean’s Youth Engagement Officer, created a Facebook group for Muslim girls in Barbados to find safe Islamic spaces to connect and care for one another. In its early years, BAML hosted recreational activities, fundraisers, and community service initiatives, such as food drives for Bajan families. Drawn together by their faith, and united in their sisterhood, BAML’s leaders slowly saw a need to address deeper, often unspoken challenges facing Muslim women in Barbados.

Looking out toward the sea as she finishes her cool coffee, Bakharia says she and her team are there to provide women and girls across Barbados with the resources, tools, and models they need to create a better, safer, and more peaceful reality — drawing on the Sacred to fuel and empower their work.

London’s 'Young Imam' Is Changing How People See Islam — One Video at a Time

“I’d never done social media before,” Sabah Ahmedi told me as he carefully balanced his phone between a napkin dispenser and sugar shaker at a chai shop in South London’s Tooting district. “Never done TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,” he said.  

“Whatever was out there, I’d never done it.” 

These days, you would never guess it. With tens of thousands of followers and multiple viral videos to his credit, Ahmedi — known as “The Young Imam”  — is a social media sensation.  

And, perhaps more importantly, his is a voice for peacebuilding and bridging divides in a time when xenophobia, antisemitism, and anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence are gripping the United Kingdom.

His journey started in 2020 when, fresh out of the Ahmadiyya seminary in Surrey, he was assigned to the press office at Baitul Futuh in Morden, one of Europe’s largest mosques. Feeling called to be a faith leader out of a sense of justice, he said he was blessed to be in the role.   

But he wasn’t very good at it, he says. “I couldn’t write a presser [press release] to save my life,” he said. His boss told him to figure things out, or he might have to find a new position. So, sitting with a friend at the same chai shop, he decided to start a social media account. The plan was to share the daily life of a faith leader in the UK.  

“Here we are now, five years later,” he said as the camera on his phone captured us splitting a slice of banana bread and chatting about his adventures online. “The account has grown into so many things — a book deal, TV appearances, entertainment contracts.”  

More than being Instagram famous, the account has also fostered opportunities for inter-religious understanding in a time of increasing polarization in British society. With a rise in anti-religious rhetoric and hate directed at Muslims like him, Ahmedi knows it’s essential to show a different side to the Sacred — and to do it in a way that is accessible and digestible for as many people as possible. Through 15-second clips and day-in-the-life reels, Ahmedi creates a vibe that is honest and compassionate, inviting viewers in a spiritually fragmented and relationally polarized society to adopt postures of love, openness, and curiosity. 

One garden to heal the world

“You can begin by mowing a path,” said Vanessa Conant, the first female Rector of St. Mary’s and the Parish of Walthamstow, East London. 

Call it an axiom, motto or sermon illustration, but for Conant, mowing a path was the start of a journey that has transformed her parish church and her community. 

When Vanessa Conant and her husband, Cameron Conant, arrived at St. Mary’s from Edinburgh in 2015, the churchyard was neglected and heavily overgrown. Gravestones were lost in the weeds, drug deals were going down in darkened corners of the church’s uncultivated property and neighbors were upset about the eyesore at the heart of their quaint, East London village. 

“If I’m honest,” Vanessa Conant said, “I did not have an environmental ambition at first. I just didn’t want people to shout at me when I opened the front door of the parsonage.” 

But gradually, as she and the church connected with community members and called on a parish member who is a professional gardener to help, Vanessa Conant said she developed broader commitments to using church property for the sake of biodiversity, wildlife and as a safe haven in the midst of a rapidly disintegrating climate. 

“Graciously and generously, my understanding has been shaped by other people’s commitments and convictions,” she said. Adopting former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ notion of the church as a “learning community,” she said she not only came to see the garden from a new perspective, but her sense of the Sacred shifted as well. 

St. Mary’s churchyard is the largest green space in Walthamstow Village. Covering nearly three acres, it was named “Churchyard of the Year” in the 2023 London in Bloom competition. St. Mary’s has also achieved silver accreditation in A Rocha International’s eco-church scheme, with laity also leading a “Climate Sunday” service each year. 

In addition to being an actively used graveyard, the church grounds are divided into several sections, including a large woodland area along a popular walkway. They also have a range of biodiversity projects, including havens for bees, insects, birds, bats and animals. Every morning and evening, hundreds walk through the yard on their way to work or school. Some stop to rest and reflect, others buzz past like the bumblebees that flit between the blooms underneath the watchful monolith of the church tower.

Working alongside church member and head gardener Tim Hewitt, dozens of local volunteers have helped make St. Mary’s Churchyard a place where Walthamstow gathers to learn about horticulture and wildlife. They plant trees and flowers and spend time admiring and engaging with the diverse range of plants and natural features that make the churchyard a peaceful place to be. 

St. Mary’s, of course, is just one garden. But its impact is much broader than what happens within the garden walls.