CARE: Global Humanitarian Surge Fund

Your support of CARE’s Humanitarian Surge Fund is making a major difference at this crucial time when foreign aid faces unprecedented cuts, both in the U.S. and overseas. Over the last six months (December 2024 to May 2025), your generosity enabled CARE to respond to more than 30 emergencies around the world, often in the crucial first hours and days before other assistance arrived. Moreover, it helped CARE unlock additional funding from other donors, even for emergencies that did not attract media attention.

What You Achieved: Thanks to your support, the Surge Fund has enabled CARE to:

· Invest nearly $3.6 million in emergency response and longer-term recovery.

· Deploy rapid response teams to 35 crisis situations.

· Multiply the impact of Surge Fund donations by nearly 27x, leveraging more than $95 million in additional funds from multiple sources.

· Center relief efforts on women and girls, who face increased vulnerability during crises.

· Prepare for future disasters through pre-positioned supplies and partner-led response plans.

· Integrate new technologies and insights to ensure a smarter and more effective response.

Current Context: Over the last few months, many of CARE’s life-saving crisis response programs were paused or terminated under the U.S. government’s Stop Work Orders. At the same time, the number and complexity of crises continued to grow:

· Rising hunger. In 2024, more than 295 million people faced acute hunger, the sixth consecutive year this figure has grown and a nearly 3x increase since 2016. Driving factors include conflict, climate change, increasing food prices, and other economic shocks.

· Protracted conflicts. Ongoing conflict and displacement in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere continue to put millions at risk. Gaza’s entire population is now experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million facing starvation.1 The fourth year of war in Ukraine has left 12.7 million people in need of support. And in Sudan, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, 30 million people need assistance, more than half of them children, while famine has been declared for the first time since 2020 in hard-hit North Darfur.

· Interrelated challenges of hunger and displacement. Nearly half of all refugees and 95% of all internally displaced people are in countries facing food crises.2 When people lose their homes and livelihoods, they are at a much greater risk of malnutrition and hunger.

In the face of these challenges, the Humanitarian Surge Fund remained a lifeline for people in harm’s way.

Links:

• Learn more about CARE's current responses here!