After USAID: What If We Rebuilt Global Aid From the Ground Up?

Photo by Max Bender on Unsplash

There are some events that make a loud, sudden impact — and others that quietly change the course of things. The dismantling of USAID might be both.

For decades, USAID helped fund everything from disaster response in the Caribbean to food security projects in East Africa to plastic pollution cleanups in Indonesia. Its closure isn’t just a Washington story — it’s a global one, rippling into classrooms, coastal villages, and city councils around the world.

And it lands squarely on the shoulders of the next generation.

Take Sheina Pribadi. She’s 20 years old, a student at UC Berkeley, and the founder of The ACE Project, a youth-led initiative that turns industrial and shell waste into sustainable building materials. She started it in high school after noticing that earthquake-damaged sidewalks in Jakarta often went unrepaired — not because of a lack of will, but because of the high cost of traditional cement.

Now, Sheina’s training communities to produce eco-friendly bricks, reduce carbon emissions, and generate income. And she’s watching the effects of the USAID pullback in real time. “Without funding, we weren’t able to rebuild any sidewalks,” she told me. “But with support — from Habitat for Humanity, One Young World, and others — we’ve been able to keep going.”