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They refer to themselves as the "emergency rescue team". Following their sudden termination when overseas aid faced cuts in the past months, a team of devoted professionals decided to establish their own rescue package.

Choosing not to "dwell on sadness", an ex-staffer, along with similarly motivated ex-colleagues, started actions to save some of the vital initiatives that faced closure after the funding decreases.

At present, almost 80 programmes have been preserved by a facilitation effort operated by the economist and other former agency employees, which has found them over $110m in new funding. The team behind the resource optimization project initiative calculates it will benefit forty million people, encompassing many young kids.

Following the agency closure, spending was frozen, numerous staff lost their jobs, and international programmes either ended suddenly or were struggling toward what Rosenbaum describes as "final deadlines".

The former staffer and some of his colleagues were reached out to by a philanthropic organization that "wanted to understand how they could optimize the utilization of their finite budgets".

They developed a menu from the terminated programmes, selecting those "providing the most life-saving aid per dollar" and where a alternative supporter could realistically step in and keep things going.

They quickly understood the need was wider than that initial entity and began to approach further funding sources.

"We referred to ourselves as the rescue team at the outset," says the economist. "The vessel has been sinking, and there are insufficient rescue vessels for every project to board, and so we're striving to truly save as many babies as we can, place as many onto these support channels as possible, via the initiatives that are delivering aid."

The project, now working as part of a international policy center, has obtained financial support for numerous programmes on its roster in more than 30 nations. Three have had original funding returned. A number were could not be preserved in time.

Funding has come from a mix of philanthropic foundations and private benefactors. Most choose to be unidentified.

"These donors stem from varied backgrounds and opinions, but the shared sentiment that we've encountered from them is, 'I feel appalled by what's going on. I sincerely wish to discover an approach to intervene,'" explains Rosenbaum.

"I think that there was an 'lightbulb moment' for everyone involved as we commenced efforts on this, that this provided an opportunity to transition from the inactivity and despair, remaining in the gloom of everything that was unfolding around us, to having something productive to really sink our teeth into."

An example programme that has secured funding through the initiative is work by the the medical alliance to provide services encompassing nutritional rehabilitation, prenatal and postnatal support and crucial pediatric vaccinations in Mali.

It is vital to continue these initiatives, says the economist, not only because reinitiating work if they stopped would be extremely costly but also because of how much reliance would be lost in the zones of instability if the group pulled out.

"They shared […] 'we're very worried that if we depart, we may lose our place.'"

Programmes with extended objectives, such as improving medical infrastructure, or in other fields such as education, have not been part of Pro's work. It also is not trying to preserve programmes forever but to "buy time for the groups and, truthfully, the wider community, to figure out a longer-term solution".

Now that they have obtained support for each programme on its first selection, Pro says it will now prioritize assisting more people with "tested, efficient solutions".