Letter from Michelle Nunn, CARE’s President and CEO
As huge challenges continue and many hopes remain unfulfilled – in Gaza, in Sudan, in Haiti – more than half of our CARE country offices have been responding to urgent humanitarian needs.
In the face of terror, deprivation, and enormous suffering, our teams have been there, delivering help, hope, and care every day, reminding us all of our individual and collective power to make the world a better place.
Here are some of the lives CARE touched in 2024:
- Sarah Ruben, a mother of five who inherited a small cardamom holding in Tanzania and joined a CARE community savings group. She took out a loan and learned about agriculture, digital tools, and equality for women and girls. She added shade trees, connected with private companies and market access, and started a collective with other women who chose her as their treasurer. Now Sarah provides jobs for other women, pays for her
children’s food and school fees, and shares family decision-making with her husband. - Bhagavati Adhikwari grew up in one of Nepal’s landless squatter communities and rose to lead a force of 55,000 people who succeeded in enshrining landless squatter rights in Nepal’s constitution. Her organization became a
founding member of CARE’s Nepal Humanitarian Partnership Platform, which delivers fast, efficient, and locally led emergency aid in one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. - Violeta Pacheco lives in a poor neighborhood of Lima, Peru. She started a textile business 18 years ago with a single sewing machine, entering a world dominated by men, able to access financing only because her husband was willing to co-sign for loans. Today Violeta’s business employs 14 people – 12 of them women. And in 2024, she took out her first loan in her own name.
Multiply the stories of these three women and consider that, in 2024, CARE:
- Reached 53 million people in 121 countries.
- Helped starving families get food in Sudan, earthquake victims rebuild homes in Turkey and Syria, and small businesses flourish in Honduras.
- Supported women smallholder farmers to adapt to environmental shifts in Vietnam and Niger, and women entrepreneurs to sell solar energy in Sierra Leone.
- Continued educating girls in Nepal, Somalia, and Zambia.
- Opened a health clinic in Gaza and helped vaccinate thousands of children against polio.
Even as we look back, we carry forward the heroic work of CARE’s 80-year history, which we will celebrate in 2025. For eight decades, CARE has been there, advancing our global impact, working alongside 14 different U.S. presidents. Going forward, we will continue to forge bipartisan pathways to increase humanitarian impact in the world. We remain firmly
resolved to save lives and defeat poverty. And we are more committed than ever to standing with women and girls around the world. CARE will be wherever we’re needed, whatever happens, no matter what.
Thank you for helping CARE to bring courage, imagination, and commitment to the world.
Michelle Nunn
President and CEO