West Bank Quaker school has USAID funding cut
A Quaker school in Palestine has been left with gaping holes in its campus and finances after US Agency for International Development (USAID) funding was abruptly terminated.
Ramallah Friends School had been building a $1.4 million assembly hall to help guide its 1,400 students in the school's founding principles of peace, equality and justice.
Instead, the 150-year-old Quaker institution has been left with a building site and $332,000 debt after its grant was cancelled.
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The termination of the Ramallah Friends School grant illustrates the human cost of the USAID decision
- Paul Parker
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The school's Foundation for Tomorrow is just one of the 5,200 projects cut as part of a purge of 82 per cent of USAID programmes by the Trump administration.
The cuts are part of moves to bring US government expenditure in line with the administration's “America First" approach.
They come as the UK government agreed last month to slash the aid budget by 40 per cent to fund an increase in military spending.
Quakers are profoundly concerned that these decisions will deepen threats to peace by increasing global insecurity
Aid budgets are spent on projects ranging from polio vaccinations to improving girls' education to food kitchens in conflict zones.
Cutting these programmes increases the risk of another global pandemic and widening circles of conflict.
Ramallah Friends School is waiting to find out if their $332,000 distribution request, submitted before the suspension, will be honoured.
The school, where students attend silent meetings for worship and learn about nonviolent peace-making, is also working to fill their $1 million funding gap.
Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “The termination of the Ramallah Friends School grant illustrates the human cost of the USAID decision.
“We believe that there is that of God in every person - farmers struggling to grow food in drought-stricken regions, refugees seeking safety, families rebuilding their lives after devastating floods.
“Lasting security will not be found in stockpiling weapons. True peace can only be created through the shared efforts of all people."