Historians may settle on President Donald Trump's demolition of the United States Agency for International Development as the perfect exemplar of America's precipitous plunge: the nullification of the best and most idealistic of what we have to offer by those whose values are the worst and most cynical we've ever experienced. Founded by John Kennedy in the early days of his administration, it was eliminated by Trump in the first days of his. Its mission, as USAID's former Assistant Administrator Atul Gawande has written in his Foreword to a recent book on the agency, was "ending diseases like polio, tuberculosis and HIV, assisting with disaster relief in places such as Ukraine and Gaza, (and) protecting orphans, refugees and religious minorities in some of the most hellish places on earth."

In "Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID," the agency's former Director of Policy, Programs and Planning for Global Health, Nicholas Enrich, describes the thoughtless, almost gleeful obliteration of USAID, its inarguable value to the world's most desperate people be damned. The toll imposed by the administration's dismantling of USAID, Gawande writes, "has been staggering. Boston University researchers have conservatively estimated that, one year later, the shutdown has already killed at least three-quarters of a million people, most of them children. The bleeding is guaranteed to extend far into the future, even if funding and commitment to development assistance are restored."

Former U.S. Ambassador to the African Union Stephanie Sullivan, a career diplomat who also served as Ambassador to Ghana and the Congo, calls the termination of USAID "shockingly ill-considered," emphasizing that in the wake of the immoral and foolish withdrawal of the humanitarian assistance that USAID provided, "private initiatives supporting development are all the more important."

Smart, dedicated humanitarians are attempting to step into the breach. One impressive example is an organization which punches well above its budget. Global Camps Africa, headquartered in Virginia, was founded over 20 years ago to provide curriculum-based programs at residential camps and year-round youth clubs to help orphans and other vulnerable children from the Soweto region of Johannesburg, South Africa to protect them from addiction, exploitation, psychological and physical abuse and disease. In those two decades, it has served as a haven for over 12,000 kids and now reaches 2,000 annually through camps, clubs and other programs. Astonishingly, it does this on a current budget of $650,000. Most of this goes to hiring counselors, providing food and medical care and using arts and crafts, theater, music and sports to give hope to kids who have no earthly reason to feel hopeful.

"I saw one of the villages our campers come from: dirt floors, corrugated shacks, one room for the entire family, no running water," said Global Camps Africa's chairman, Tom Finn. "Going to camp is like going to the moon for our kids. Three meals is an impossible luxury. They are safe and can be kids. And they learn lessons that transform their lives, like loving to learn, self-respect, prevention of HIV, respect for young women and practical knowledge like budgeting and computer skills."

The camp was the brainchild of Philip Lilienthal, a former Peace Corps volunteer who went on to become a philanthropist with deep roots in Ethiopia, where he established the country's first sleep-away summer camp. "What matured over the years," Lilienthal says, "was my view that camp need not be just fun and games but could be the vehicle by which vital life skills could be taught and integrated into the campers' learning process."

Based on the impact he sees Global Camps Africa having on kids and families from the Soweto region, Lilienthal is convinced that the model is readily capable of being expanded and replicated elsewhere. "Our way of operating," he says, "has been to invite the leaders of interested groups to our training and to stay for the entire camp program at no charge to them. We hope they will be blown away and will want to implement the program at their sites."

The elimination of USAID has stained our country. But the generosity, grit and resourcefulness of non-profits like Global Camps Africa is a blessing — for the families they serve and, of course, for America's soul.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States Attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

Photo credit: Hu Chen at Unsplash