They were promised a lifeline to 'graduate' from poverty. Then it was taken away

By Fatma Tanis

Published November 2, 2025 at 6:04 AM CST

Participants who'd been enrolled in the now canceled program to lift people out of poverty in the Palabek Refugee Settlement in northern Uganda as well as in the local community: (from left) Santa Angwech, 26, a single mother of three who takes care of two other children; Michael Obwoya, 49, an elder in the refugee camp; Florence Amungo, 34, who'd hoped to raise pigs to help support her family.

PALABEK, Northern Uganda — Imagine if you were a refugee living at a makeshift settlement in a foreign country with no way to earn a steady income.

Then someone promised you a life-changing opportunity: They'd give you a sum of money and a coach to help you turn it into a source of income.

But just as you are about to receive that support, it gets canceled.

That's what happened to some 8,100 South Sudanese refugees in Uganda this year. They were enrolled in a program with a bureaucratic name — Graduating to Resilience Scale Activity — and a simple strategy: a $205 sum for each participant along with coaching to start a small business.

That may not seem like a lot of money, but in Uganda, the average annual income is $753.

Irene Atoo harvests peanuts and literally gets paid in peanuts that she brings home to feed her family. Atoo has two daughters and is also caring for her younger sister and niece. She was one of the nearly 3,500 Ugandan locals who were set to participate in a program run by the charity AVSI to "graduate" people from poverty before funding was terminated by the Trump administration.

And in the Palabek camp, home to about 100,000 refugees, most people have no way to earn a living other than occasional farming work, at best making $2 a week. The camp is just around 30 miles away from the border with South Sudan, were a civil war and ethnic violence that began in 2013 led tens of thousands of people — many on foot — to flee to Uganda. New refugees continue to arrive every day as conditions in South Sudan remain unstable.

Before the Trump administration's aid cuts, the residents of the camp relied mainly on food or cash from aid groups to survive.

A view of the home of Michael Obwoya, 49, who was set to participate in the AVSI program along with some 3,500 Ugandan households. The arrival of tens of thousands of refugees in the area has been a strain for locals as they share limited land, water and firewood resources.

Last year the U.S. government awarded a $15 million grant to the nonprofit group AVSI Foundation to set up what's known as a "Graduation Approach" program serving the refugee and host communities. The goal was that in three years, the participants would ... graduate ... from extreme poverty and become self-supporting. In past studies, similar programs with a onetime cash award plus coaching have produced a "significant" increase in the income of participants after 24 months.

In addition to the refugee households, some 3,500 Ugandans living in extreme poverty near the settlement were to participate. The arrival of tens of thousands of refugees in the area has been a strain for locals as they have had to share limited land, water, and firewood resources with refugees. While the refugees can get some help from aid groups, locals often are overlooked, and AVSI's program aimed to bridge some of that gap.

Florence Amungo, 34, a refugee from South Sudan, now lives at Palabek Refugee Settlement in Northern Uganda. Amungo was enrolled in a program to help people "graduate" from poverty — then found out the program was cut. She had hoped to raise pigs to support her household of 14 people — her husband, their five biological children and other children that she cares for.

In February 2025 the grant to AVSI was abruptly nullified — along with thousands of other programs around the world — as part of the overhaul of foreign aid set in motion by the Trump administration.

In the letters the administration sent out to non-profit groups like AVSI, it said the terminated programs were not aligned with U.S. national interests.

AVSI — founded in Italy in 1972 as the Association of Volunteers in International Service — had to lay off 140 local staff recently hired for the Palabek project, according to Rita Larok, the director of programs.

As difficult as it was to let staff go, Larok says it was even harder to break the news to the participants, who saw the project as their only way to becoming self-sufficient. Their "hopes and dreams [were] shattered," she says.

The disappointment of the lost opportunity has reverberated through the settlement and local towns, says Ugandan official Fivi Akullu, the Refugee Desk Officer for the settlement.

"If the U.S. government had a heart, actually, this [funding cut] should have been done phase by phase," she says. "It was a very drastic decision to say this is it. No funding, no nothing."

Fivi Akullu, 36, is the refugee desk officer for the Office of the Prime Minister at Palabek Refugee Settlement in Northern Uganda. Every morning when she arrives at her office in the camp, she sees lines of people waiting to speak with her: women, children, elderly. "Sometimes I don't even have words, because it's too much, and I cannot help everyone. It really hurts," Akullu says.

NPR reached out to the State Department for comment but did not receive a response.

On a trip to Uganda, NPR interviewed some of the individuals affected by the cancellation.

Akim Joseph Yanga: "Let us be resilient"

Akim Joseph Yanga was excited about the cash and the coaching. The 63-year-old planned to buy as many as 5 goats — that's what $205 would cover — and start a small livestock business. He was counting on the program coach to help him figure out the logistics of the business and how to best use his skills to build it.

The AVSI project gave people hope, says Yanga, who'd fled South Sudan in 2019 because of conflict. And in the wake of the program's dissolution, he and other camp officials have seen signs of despair: an increase in cases of violence that have required his mediation, including domestic violence and thefts of neighbors' chickens or goats. There have even been several suicide attempts, he says.

Akim Joseph Yanga, 63, is a refugee from Juba in South Sudan and a village leader in the Palabek Refugee Settlement in Northern Uganda. He was also set to be a participant in the USAID-funded program to lift people out of poverty. He'd hoped to start a livestock business.

"It is true that when our father, Donald Trump, started reducing the [foreign aid] budget globally. It affected us very seriously," Yanga says, adding that he calls the U.S. president "father" because he sees him as a provider to vulnerable people around the world.

Yanga has been telling disappointed families in the camp not to lose hope.

"My message to them is let us be resilient. God will not forget us. The Samaritans will come and help us."

Santa Angwech: "I was completely hopeless"

Santa Angwech, a 26-year-old single mom with three children, saw the AVSI program as a lifeline. In anticipation of growing a business with the program, she started making cassava chips to sell in the market from cassava she'd planted in front of her hut, with seeds she had received from aid groups.

More so than the money, she was looking forward to what the coaches would teach her: how to build the business, save money, grow additional crops and even how to deal with the gender-based violence that is part of camp life.

Santa Angwech shows the corn she has harvested from a local farm. She says it will last her family about 2 weeks. She and her family have been mostly depending on aid groups for food. Angwech saw the USAID-funded program to lift people out of poverty as her only way to self-sufficiency.

In February, she received a text message from AVSI that the program had shut down.

"I was completely hopeless when I saw the message.

"The big question that I have is how you can solve my problems. That is the only thing I need, because if I know how to solve the problem, nothing will defeat me," Angwech says.

Santa Angwech's son drew a picture of their family on a mud wall of their home.

She's not angry at the U.S. for its decision to cut aid. "You cannot be angry [at] somebody who refused to give you something because you are just a beggar," she says.

Instead, she prays that funding will flow again soon: "If they do not help us? Where should we start from? What should we do? There is nothing."

Okot Bosco: "America benefits, but they don't know"

For Okot Bosco, 36, the new AVSI program was an opportunity he could only have dreamed of as a refugee at the camp — the former teacher had been hired as a coach to guide participants for the 3-year duration of the project. Now he's lost this job — and his hope of using his salary from AVSI to pay back a loan he'd taken from a local bank to build up a small shop selling basic household items.

He's now struggling with supporting his children and wife and has taken up farming work.

Bosco believes that President Trump, in making these cuts, doesn't understand that not only do recipients of aid benefit — America, as the giver, does too.

Akim Joseph Yanga, left, speaks with with Bosco Okot, who began working with with AVSI's program in Palabek as a coach to help people build small businesses until the program was terminated as a result of USAID funding cuts.

"When you're in a problem and someone helps you, you will never forget that person."

That philosophy is reflected in his own life. He was born in a displaced persons camp during the Sudanese civil war of the 1980s.

"I grew up seeing this logo of USAID on the cooking oil can and food boxes — knowing that Americans are the people who can support us in food, education, in medicine, in everything," Bosco says. "America benefits, but they don't know that they are benefiting. They benefit because the people trust them so much."