When the U.S. Agency for International Development shut down, more than 80% of its programs were canceled.

In an attempt to keep the most cost-effective in life-saving projects up and running,

two laid-off agency employees created a website called Project Resource Optimization.

It matches donors with threatened programs. So far, they've helped

keep nearly 80 projects running in 30 countries. Ali Rogan sat down with the founders,

Caitlin Tulloch, and Rob Rosenbaum. Thank you both so much for joining us. Caitlin, first to you,

what was it like when you realized that USAID was going to be essentially

shutting down? And what were you the most worried about happening after that?

Thanks, Sally. It really was a tumultuous time earlier this year. I think initially we were

trying to figure out what the impact of the executive orders was going to be in terms of future programming.

And there was a belief that there would be future programming.

USAID would continue in some way.

But after not too long, I think you could really read the tea leaves and understand that

the agency as a whole was going to be shutting down.

And I think the scariest part of that, the part that really a lot of us had to spend a lot of time sitting with and processing was that when you knew what USAID had been doing and the importance of some of these programs for global health for survival and crises around the world, the thought of that just blinking out was really, really scary.

And Rob, as somebody inside, as this all was happening, we heard many advocates for USAID

saying this is going to lead to instability, hunger, deaths. But as people who are watching

this very closely, what have you seen in terms of the impacts on the ground?

Unfortunately, that is starting to really bear out. And unfortunately, I don't think that we

have seen the sort of full effects of this. Many of the outcomes that the programs at USAID were

set up to support take a long time to actually come to the fruition.

Immunizations that are not being met, those have lifetime consequences for children.

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