Apocalypse Buddy

It’s a dreadful experience to have a child in pain, ten time-zones away, and be unable to hold her and say with conviction that things will be ok. Our daughter, Bronwyn, an Environment Officer with USAID /Bangladesh was among several thousand employees who lost her job to the “wood chipper” on February 23, 2025. The shock of losing a career she loved sent a dagger through her heart. But it was the cruelty of Trump/Musk name-calling – “criminals, fanatics, and lunatics”-that brought her to her knees.

Our family legacy is intertwined with the agency. My husband, Charles, worked for USAID as a health officer for thirty years and our daughter, Bronwyn, followed in dad’s footsteps, joining the agency as an Environment officer in 2011, the year Charles retired.

Most of my overseas work in parenting and early childhood education was funded through USAID contracts. We are all stunned and deeply disheartened about the shuttering of USAID.

Above all else, we worry about the damage to America’s standing in the world, it’s safety from global threats so quietly managed by USAID teams, and the suffering of the world’s most vulnerable people who benefited from USAID humanitarian assistance, tools and training that provided hope and transformed lives.  

From our family’s stance in the world, it has been easy for us to explain how every dollar spent was beneficial to American interests, while also garnering admiration from our beneficiaries for our country, people and principles. Beneficiaries dreamed of being like us. They longed to live in a democracy that invested in its citizens to build a prosperous nation versus robbing the poor to pay the rich. They admired a country that helped others in need.

With each new administration, USAID administrators and staffers revisited every program and realigned its work based on new priorities, as it also did when Trump was elected president. Decades ago, USAID augmented one of the toughest auditing systems among government agencies. This was to ensure that allocations were targeted and beneficial to USAID’s mission – serving as a vital tool for U.S. soft power, humanitarian aid, and countering global threats. Each year, congress reviewed USAID programs and re-affirmed bi-lateral support for the agency and its work.

In spite of the facts, Trump and Musk declared that USAID promoted a corrupt and “woke” agenda, that it was rife with wasteful spending. Funding for Sesame Street in Iraq for $20 million (since the Iraq war) was cited as an example. As one of the program designers of Sesame Street/ Bangladesh, along with my respected former colleague, Caryle Cammisa, I can assure critics that, quite the contrary, USAID Sesame Street (Sisimpur) programming has been a powerful tool to educate children in democratic ideals, along with math and literacy for a start-up cost of !.5 million (See notes below).

My husband speaks eloquently about how health spending for threats like HIV/AID and pandemic research prevents the spread of disease to America. Our daughter can give examples of how her work in Biodiversity prevents mass migration, that is such a hot button issue, or how her work to save the planet has resulted in innovative tools now used globally, such as small solar powered lamps that enable children to study at night and mom’s to develop products to enhance income, which ultimately improves the health of the family.

It might be hard to see why this benefits America but most congressman on both sides of the aisle, lauded USAID before they were silenced by Trump and Musk. What we lost with the shuttering of USAID was a prominent symbol of our nation’s power; perhaps its closure will become a symbol for our collapse of values. USAID operated on the fact that we cannot close our borders to problems in developing countries. They will inevitably reach our shores.

Like most USAID employees, our daughter honed specific skills and education, over many years, to understand what works best in varied development settings. USAID was more than a job; it was a life mission. So indeed, being fired without cause was an emotional and psychological blow, her future collapsing before her eyes. Her hope for a better world extinguished.

Therefore, it was no small act of kindness to heart-broken and frightened USAID employees in Bangladesh (where Bronwyn is stationed), that Ambassador Jacobson made some decisions. She assured USAID/Bangladesh staff that they were still part of the diplomatic family until departure and would continue to be granted entrance to the building and receive services. She told her Embassy staff to hug a USAID employee every day and assigned a buddy to each of them for the moment that USAID employees lost access to their computers and information from Washington. Someone to share vital information, a life-line. My heart swelled with appreciation when Bronwyn told me, “I got my good friend Jenna. I’m calling her my apocalypse buddy.”

As I am capturing this moment in our country’s decline, I will share what our daughter posted in February on Facebook:

USAID is one of the most honest, effective, agencies within the entire US government. Don't take my word for it, there is an independent non-profit that actually measures US Government accountability, transparency, and effectiveness. It’s called the Federal Invest in What Works Index, and it has USAID as number 2.

Every decision we make is driven first by the Administration's directions, second by congressional budget priorities, and third by the strategic interests of the US Mission in country, led by the Ambassador. My job, and that of all my American and Local colleagues, is to safeguard the 0.05% of the federal budget made up of taxpayer dollars that represent the will of the American people.

Development is messy, and hard, and technical. Sometimes we try things, and they don't work. I have cut projects mid cycle when we aren't achieving the results we expect. USAID hires technical experts in different fields so that we have the ability to design projects with the best chance of success, and to monitor them and know when things aren't going well.

We give our projects funny names, often as a nod to Administration priorities, but I want you to know that everything we do on the ground is deadly serious... Because the work we do is deadly serious. Even projects that have been ridiculed like "clean energy for rural women" are actually about allowing people who are completely cut off from the national grid to be able to cook for their families without inhaling toxic smoke- a top killer of women and children worldwide, and giving them light so they can do side businesses in the evening to help support their families, like tailoring or embroidery. This helps keep families together, so that husbands don't try to become migrant workers and end up on the wrong side of the law, and makes regions more stable so that extremist groups can't gain a foothold.

Tell me how that is not in America's best interest? Top generals have said in the past, that a dollar to USAID saves them thousands of bullets .I am incredibly proud of the work I've done, my Father ,Charles Llewellyn did, and that of all our colleagues around the world. I feel no shame, only sorrow.

Written by Bronwyn Llewellyn, February 2025

This blog has been difficult for me to write and slow in coming. My blogs serve as a memoir, taking current events and meaningful personal experiences, and then linking them back to past events. My reluctance to write about this USAID travesty caused me to revisit my purpose for writing about things that matter in my life. For many years I kept journals and copies of a weekly letter to record my experiences and reflections. For the past three years, I shifted to a blog format as a way to record experiences and thoughts. Why do I plow forth when it is painful to do so or when I feel that I have nothing of value to say?

I recently read an historical fiction about the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife in Massachusetts in the late 1700’s. Martha kept a daily journal that detailed her birthing of 1,000 babies, without one maternal death, as well as day-to-day family matters, the mundane and the poignant. One day she sat before her leather bound journal with a writing quill made by her husband, and had nothing to say. But what she said about having nothing to say was quite profound to me.

Martha Ballard quote from her journal:

“I cannot say why it is important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been doing it for many years on end? Or maybe-if I am being honest- it is because these markings of ink and paper will one day be the only proof that I have existed in this world. That I lived and breathed. That I loved a man and the many children he gave me. It is not that I want to be remembered, per se. I have done nothing remarkable. Not by the standards of history, at least. But I am here. And these words are the mark I will leave behind. So yes, it matters that I continue this ritual.”

We must all raise our voices and our pens to the history unfolding. The times cry out for a collection of personal stories about how we are being affected as we witness the fall of our democracy. And following the wisdom of the American Ambassador in Bangladesh, there is no more critical time to hold tight to friends. A good buddy is hard to find in an apocalypse, but makes all the difference. There is strength in numbers, and we do not need to confront this alone.

Resist!

Written by deborah-llewellyn.com/blog

deborah.llewellyn@gmail.com

Beaufort, North Carolina

5 April 2025

Notes:

For more information about Martha Ballard read:

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography – A Midwife’s Tale

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, a biographical fiction.

Description of Sisimpur Bangladesh

Early Childhood Education, with Locally-Tailored Lessons

Sisimpur emphasizes literacy, math, science, and socio-emotional skills like mutual respect and understanding, as well as delivering lessons on health, disaster preparedness, financial empowerment, and more. Beyond the beloved TV show, Sisimpur uses outreach efforts to engage children within their own communities.

Sisimpur was developed in 2003. By 2010, Sisimpur was by far the most-watched children’s program on Bangladesh television, with 86% of child viewers tuning in.

All USAID funding for Sesame Street in strategic locations around the world has been eliminated.