62 APRIL-MAY 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL e At Spirit of America, I have seen my colleagues leverage our model to make transformational changes. In Europe, our team helps local partners stand up to Russian pressure in ways large and small. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, our Regional Director Colleen Denny was on the ground within days. Since then, she and her team have delivered more than $59 million in private assistance. Beyond nonlethal support to the Ukrainian military like trucks, buses, and mobile showers, Colleen’s team empowers Ukrainian youth through UActive, a program that works with high school students to develop and implement projects to help their communities recover. Next door in Moldova, U.S. Embassy Chisinau identified a need to help rural communities endure the winter after Russia disrupted energy supplies to pressure the country’s democratic government. Colleen’s team responded by helping Moldovan partners deliver firewood and fuel to keep hundreds of families and schools warm. Across Asia, our team helps local partners build resilience from the Taiwan Straits to the Gobi Desert. In Taiwan, our Asia-Pacific team is helping civic organizations build their democracy’s resilience to crises. My colleague Josh Brandon and his Asia-Pacific team have helped Taiwanese partners train thousands of people in life-saving crisis preparedness skills. When Embassy Ulaanbaatar highlighted Mongolia’s food insecurity and dependence on Chinese agriculture, Josh’s team partnered with a Fulbright scholar to build a solar-equipped well and greenhouse in the desert, allowing local herders to feed their families and sell to local markets. In Africa, Spirit of America supports diplomats in critically important places that don’t make the daily headlines, like Comoros, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that needed help countering maritime trafficking and People’s Republic of China (PRC) fishing encroachment. To help U.S. Embassy Moroni strengthen the Comoros Coast Guard’s surveillance and search and rescue capabilities, Spirit of America’s Africa Regional Director Spirit of America Regional Program Manager Alex Ebsary (right) and U.S. Ambassador Dan Rosenblum (center) at the Aral Sea greenhouse ribbon-cutting in Kazakhstan, April 2024. COURTESY OF CHAZ MARTIN
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=