Designed and successfully piloted the concept of deploying a privately sourced ‘stop-gap fund’ to maintain direct payments to staff and suppliers at carefully selected hospitals in the period between when an official aid grant expires and a new one is awarded.
The fund enabled three hospitals to continue delivering critically needed services, and us to demonstrate a model that can benefit not just these affected communities but the wider aid ecosystem through an innovative localisation strategy that supports local service providers that otherwise would never be able to receive direct grants.
Our hope is that this direct giving channel also encourages official aid donors to think differently as they consider the constraints to the localisation of foreign aid. Why does this aid have to be channelled to local NGOs when there are countless local service providers - such as this hospital manager in Syria - in need of support, and these facilities should be a normal function of all societies?