Associated Press Reports on Emergency Funding for Helen Keller’s Disease and Nutrition Work

By Helen Keller Intl
| October 27, 2025

An Associated Press story details Project Resource Optimization, a remarkable donor-mobilization initiative that has secured tens of millions of dollars for global health projects in just a few months, highlighting Helen Keller Intl’s funded projects as an example of its success.

Project Resource Optimization (PRO) was founded earlier this year by a team of former USAID staffers after the US government cut funding for critical global health programs. In response to these cuts, the PRO team created a vetted list of cost-effective, life-saving programs in need of urgent funding.

The PRO list included funding opportunities to support Helen Keller’s work to prevent malnutrition in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Nigeria, as well as our efforts to treat and prevent neglected tropical diseases in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Sierra Leone.

Today, all of Helen Keller’s PRO projects have been funded for 12 months to fill the most critical gaps, allowing our teams to resume lifesaving health services that will reach millions of people worldwide.

Helen Keller’s Executive Vice President of Programs and Partnership, Shawn Baker, spoke to the Associated Press about the good news. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“PRO’s team worked with the implementing organizations to pare down their budgets to only the most essential parts of the most impactful projects.

For example, Helen Keller Intl ran multiple USAID-funded programs providing nutrition and treatment for neglected tropical diseases. All of those programs were eventually terminated, taking away almost a third of Helen Keller’s overall revenue.

Shawn Baker, an executive vice president at Helen Keller, said as soon as it became clear that the U.S. funding was not coming back, they started to triage their programming. When PRO contacted them, he said they were able to provide a much smaller budget for private funders. Instead of the $7 million annual budget for a nutrition program in Nigeria, they proposed $1.5 million to keep it running.”

Thanks to our generous community, some of our most essential work will soon resume. With your ongoing support, we can continue to protect the health and nutrition of millions of children and families around the world.

Read the full story: After US foreign aid cuts, private donors gave more than $125M to keep programs going