06/10/2026
Thank you to Devex for featuring OneAID in this article, alongside our colleagues at Aid on the Hill and the Aid Transition Alliance. We're proud to stand along these and other groups that have sprung up in the past 16 months to support the communities we serve and the U.S. foreign assistance workforce.
An excerpt:
“We’ve definitely leaned into the community and information and communications sphere,” said Catherine Baker, OneAid’s managing director of strategic partnership and communications. “We’re really trying to ensure that we stay connected, that people aren’t left behind. And, we’re also trying to create these pockets of foreign assistance experts who can engage their communities and feel equipped to talk about their work.”
For the first several months of last year, that meant working around the clock — pulling 12- and 16-hour days because, on the one hand, things were breaking down so fast, and on the other hand, it was a way to cope with the scale of change. As the months passed, the work transitioned into support services, such as hosting workshops on career transitions, and appointing “OneAid ambassadors” to bring people together in their own communities.
By crowdsourcing funds online, OneAid has provided those ambassadors with several $100 grants, helping them host events that span park picnics to university-hosted panels to a vigil for USAID itself.
“We’re a core team of three that are doing this really just because there’s a need,” said Baker, who spoke to Devex alongside OneAid’s two other coordinators, Cate Klepacki and Jackie Ndebeka. “Our plan is to stick around as long as we feel we’re meeting the needs of our community and that they’re benefiting from our service.”
..the women behind [OneAID] are continuing to operate on a volunteer basis, even while most of them hold full- or part-time jobs.
“Being able to create a space where we can keep people engaged, even though they might have scattered to the wind — but still keep people connected — is a success,” Ndebeka said. “Anything we do kind of stems from that desire to keep people together.”
To read the full article (subscription required):
“You've unleashed them and left them unemployed," said Amanda Nataro, one of the founders of Aid on the Hill. "So, what did you think was going to happen?”
