The Fundraiser Who Went Home: Why I Took an Africa Sabbatical After the 2025 International Development Funding Cuts.

The Fundraiser Who Went Home: Why I Took an Africa Sabbatical After the 2025 International Development Funding Cuts.

I traveled to Africa searching for answers about philanthropy. I came home with something I never expected—myself.

I had been unusually quiet.

Why?

Because my cup was empty.

I was mentally exhausted.

Professionally, my heart was broken.

As a global fundraiser and philanthropy advisor serving nonprofits across the world, I watched the devastating ripple effects of the 2025 international development funding cuts unfold in real time.

For decades, nonprofit organizations have stepped into the gaps where governments, institutions, and markets have fallen short. They have fed families, educated children, expanded access to healthcare, strengthened local economies, advanced gender equity, protected the environment, and defended human rights.

Then, almost overnight, the ground shifted.

Organizations that had spent years building trust in their communities suddenly faced impossible choices. Programs were paused. Staff were laid off. Critical services were reduced. Leaders who had dedicated their lives to serving others were forced into survival mode.

I felt the current administration had turned its back on people living on the margins—and on the organizations working every day to serve them and move humanity forward.

Over the last year, I watched nonprofits across the United States struggle to navigate this new reality. If the effects were this devastating here, they had to be even more profound across the African continent.

I could no longer sit still and witness the harm from thousands of miles away. I needed to go and see for myself.

So I threw caution to the wind and took a one-month Africa sabbatical that began in Nairobi, Kenya.

I want to be clear: this was not a vacation. It was both deeply personal and profoundly professional.

I went to heal my heart, quiet my mind, restore my body, and seek answers to questions I knew I couldn't find from behind a computer screen or inside another research report.

One question followed me across the Atlantic:

How were organizations and communities across Africa surviving one of the greatest disruptions to international development funding in recent history?

I had to see for myself.

But before I could ask difficult questions of anyone else, I had to answer one for myself.

What Did Kia Need to Refill Her Cup?

My first assignment wasn't work. It was care. For the first three days, I slept.

The kind of deep, uninterrupted sleep I hadn't experienced in what felt like years.

I allowed my nervous system to settle and gave my body permission to simply rest.

And when I finally came up for air, I met the giraffes.

Standing in their presence, watching them move with such grace, gentleness, and quiet confidence, something awakened inside me.

They were beautiful—majestic, curious, and full of wonder.

As I fed a baby giraffe, I laughed like a little girl.

The kind of uninhibited, wholehearted laughter I hadn't heard from myself in years.

In that moment, I realized how much of my childlike joy had quietly been stripped away by the emotional weight of navigating life and leadership in America.

I also knew there was something deeply spiritual about this sabbatical.

God wasn't just changing my scenery; He was restoring my soul.

That very moment marked the beginning of my healing.

More Than a Sabbatical

Over a one-month period, I traveled across Kenya and Ethiopia, meeting remarkable nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, community organizers, and everyday people whose resilience challenged everything I thought I knew about leadership, generosity, and hope.

I witnessed extraordinary innovation in the face of extraordinary uncertainty.

I saw organizations refusing to abandon their communities, even when resources became scarce.

I experienced the power of African hospitality, indigenous wisdom, and the profound belief that communities possess strengths that cannot be measured solely by funding.

What a difference a month made.

By the time I returned home, I wasn't the same woman who had boarded that plane.

I came home transformed.

This is the first chapter of the journey that changed my life.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be sharing this experience in its rawest and most authentic form—in ways you've never seen before.

I invite you to experience Africa through the eyes of a global fundraiser.

I don't believe my life will ever be the same.

Author's Note: This is the first installment of The Fundraiser Who Went Home, a series chronicling my Africa sabbatical across Kenya and Ethiopia in the wake of the 2025 international Official Development Assistance cuts. Through these reflections, I explore philanthropy, fundraising, wellness, leadership, and the enduring resilience of African civil society.