It’s been a roller coaster week for the folks who work at Edesia, a Rhode Island nonprofit that helps feed hungry children around the world.
Senior staff members were in Sierra Leone, visiting one of their feeding programs, when the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) issued an immediate stop-work order for all of its contractors, expanding on an executive order issued by President Donald Trump freezing foreign aid.
When that order came down, 336,000 cartons of Edesia product were already in transit, headed overseas to various hot spots. When The Public’s Radio visited the company’s North Kingstown factory Thursday, the staff was in full crisis mode.
“We have 50 million sachets on the water,” said Edesia founder and CEO Navyn Salem. “These are going to Nigeria, Haiti, Chad, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar.”
Many of the overseas NGOs Edesia normally works with have laid-off their staff in response to the stop-work order.
“We’ve got to find out who actually in the field is still there to get the product to the kids that need it,” said global sales director Ron Dalgleash.
The product Edesia makes is a fortified peanut butter called Plumpy’Nut. It’s distributed in small foil packets that are a lifesaver for severely malnourished children.
“We make the food that saves lives,” Salem recently told the United Nations Security Council. In the decades the company has been producing Plumpy’Nut in Rhode Island, Edesia estimates it has saved the lives of nearly 26,000,000 children.
Edesia’s staff was blindsided by the possibility that they may have to shut down their USAID contract, which accounted for 85% of the company’s business last year. They also do work for UNICEF and the World Food Program. But the sudden loss of USAID’s business would leave a $50 million hole in their budget.
The company, which claims to be Rhode Island’s biggest exporter by weight, produces all of its product at the North Kingstown factory, which employs 160 people. Under the terms of the company’s contract with USAID, all of the ingredients are sourced in America.
“We buy packaging film and boxes from Rhode Island,” said procurement chief Matt Wilkie, a Rhode lsland native. “We buy dairy from Massachusetts; peanuts from Georgia; soy flour from Iowa. We buy vitamin and mineral pre-mix from New York.”
That means ripple effects of a sudden shutdown would not just be felt overseas, where lives are at stake. Here in the U.S., it would have an impact on farmers, manufacturers and shipping companies, too.
The company was on tenterhooks for a week, knowing that the USAID administrator in charge of their contract was due to lose his job Friday.
Late Thursday, he called to break bad news about the stop work order. Then, mid-phone call, came a dramatic turnaround.
Someone in Washington clearly got the message that this was a program worth saving.
“It’s good news all around!” said Salem. “For the U.S., for children everywhere, for the people who work here — it’s a win-win for everybody.”
It was a scary week, given the turmoil in Washington. But, for this Rhode Island nonprofit and the millions of children they feed, a happy ending.
