‍HUMANITE is a peace collective working to stop the spread of violence.

We are donors, frontline operators, and refugees. Professionals and volunteers. Young and old.

HUMANITE is locally-led, living through the conflicts you’re hoping to solve.

In forgotten wars and emerging conflicts, HUMANITE is behind enemy lines, staffing supply lines, and organizing online.

HUMANITE is wherever you are and everywhere you want to be, using emergency relief, business development, and community repair to stop the spread of violence and fortify peace.

Before. During. After. Be here now. ▸

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. By 2014, the terror group ISIS had taken over a third of Iraq and Syria. That’s when our founders met. Through the ISIS era, our founding team was first-on-the-scene together in numerous battle zones, earning global recognition for using emergency aid and community development to broker more peaceable outcomes among militaries, militias, extremists, and civilians.

Tribal leaders, youth volunteers, and local NGOs made us successful. Local relationships are industrial aid’s biggest weakness. A revolving door of foreigners can only do so much.In 2022, we took our 65+ years of combined experience and formed a new kind of humanitarian organization. Founded by refugees and war survivors, HUMANITE is forging a new collective model, many organizations working as one, to ensure better outcomes and more global resources in the hands of local peacemakers around the world.

Become a member today ▸

Many in HUMANITE have decades of experience working with governments and armed groups across multiple countries to help secure more peaceable outcomes through negotiated partnerships related to the provision of essential services and economic inputs. We’ve also seen these efforts fall apart. In all cases, we rest knowing that vulnerable, often hard-to-reach people are at the center of our considerations. Militaries and governments are crucial players in local conflict. No meaningful peace can be made or sustained without principled engagement.
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HUMANITE engages our governments and militaries because it is the peaceful way to peace. But it is membership funding that makes us such effective, desirable partners for the powers that be. While foreign aid is handcuffed by foreign agendas, our members make it possible for us to do the right thing for local people in need, fast, like no one else can, defusing tensions, and setting the table for increasing goodwill among communities at odds.

Become a member ▸

HUMANITE is founded and led by refugees and war survivors.

Financial decisions are carried out in according with all US and international laws and are overseen by our Board of Directors according to IRS regulations.

The initial recommendations and decisions at HUMANITE about who lives and dies are not made by foreigners on the periphery, but by those of us who live the conflicts we’re dying to solve.

HUMANITE has no foreign headquarters. No security or armored cars. Just more of your money, straight to the frontlines.

When you donate for a specific campaign or intervention, your donation is tagged and tracked accordingly. We make both urgent and long-term funding decisions based on account balances by country. Because conflicts are dynamic and needs can change overnight, we focus on keeping the collective and its fellows well-funded on an up-front, multi-year, country-wide basis and always make every effort to use your donation on behalf of those you intend to serve. All membership and general donations are prioritized for “where needed most” expenses. In order to facilitate maximum impact and avoid duplication of services or waste, HUMANITE operates under a moral obligation to use any donation “where needed most”, as local battlefield priorities change and the countries we call home move fluidly between before/during/after war programming.

If you have any additional or specific questions about the use of your donation, please don’t hesitate to reach out at info@humanite.org. We’d love to talk to you!

Generous donors like you saved our lives and helped us transform ourselves from those who were once attacked, homeless, and on-the-run into humanitarian innovators and founders. We believe you’re the missing piece of the HUMANITE collective.

As locals, we have the vision, the heart, and the hope to create change. We are already putting our lives on the line for peace. We're dying to solve these conflicts. But we often lack the money necessary to scale our vision and our solutions to the problems we face each day.

Your biggest impact comes by joining the collective as a member. As a member, your monthly donation gives us the ability to plan our emergency and post-disaster budgets in multiple countries well into the future.

Most members stay for years, giving us a robust forecast as to how much:

—food we can supply in crisis
—how many homes we can rebuild after bombings
—how many businesses we can start to reinvigorate our economies.

‍We know what it’s like to live on the run and go hungry. We make the most of every dollar you give.

Would you become a member of HUMANITE today?
Nothing helps more!

Become a member ▸

Below is a brief snapshot of the kind of work our team has done:

BEFORE WAR
—Provide emergency food for marginalized, extremely insecure communities
—In-school education and feeding programs with inter-ethnic, tribal, and religious equality and belonging curricula
—Engaged stakeholders of violent conflict in effort to avert violence
—Create inter-ethnic, tribal, and religious community service groups

DURING WAR
—Frontlines medical and food amidst airstrikes, snipers, and suicide bombers
—Air drops into besieged territory to prevent civilian death
—Create bakeries and grocers in warzones, providing business income, jobs, and direct food relief
—Repair and rebuild schools damaged by war
—Conduct work in inter-ethnic, tribal, and religious cohorts

AFTER WAR
—Rebuild businesses and homes in cities leveled by airstrikes, incentivizing refugee returns
—Start 1,500+ small businesses with 90% success rate after 12 months
—“Truth and reconciliation” meetings between tribes post-genocide
—Brokered trade deals as tools of repair between communities at odds
—Conduct work in inter-ethnic, tribal, and religious cohorts

‍Members make this work possible, providing us leeway to take unconventional risks in order to fulfill the Golden Rule.

Rebuild a business and provide emergency food today ▸

‍HUMANITE focuses on communities affected by complex international conflicts; particularly in countries that lack the means for foreign donors to easily access and fund local peacemakers due to international sanctions and banking restrictions, including access to Paypal and credit card processing. Inside the countries where we live, we fill gaps, go where no one else will go, and reach those who have fallen through the cracks before it’s too late.

Because HUMANITE relies primarily on membership support, not restrictive foreign aid contracts, these teammates become your rapid response force in times of crisis; and your sure bet after everyone else has gone home.Join the collective.

Support local peacemakers ▸

Become a member. Yes, membership includes donating, but it’s also the best way to go beyond the transactional and into the deeper caring, engagement, and belonging that we hope for you to experience at HUMANITE.

Volunteer. Do you have a skill? We’re always looking for:

✓ writers who can chop it up on foreign policy, culture, and human well-being
✓ graphic designers, esp. for graphic tees, stickers, and other merch
✓ fundraisers and organizers

Can I volunteer or visit your work in one of the countries where you work?

Your care and desire to go deeper with your HUMANITE teammates across the world is so encouraging!

Locally, HUMANITE generally seeks to keep the focus on the day-to-day needs of our neighbors, innovating with them and for them in order to move through and rise above our current realities. Hosting outside guests is exciting and provides a great educational experience, but it often comes at a very high cost to our local staff, chapters, and fellows and the local work itself.

That said, we prefer relationships to rigid rules. If you think your visit can be a force multiplier for peace, we’d love to hear from you.

Email us here ▸

Your empathy and desire to help means the world! In most cases, the countries where HUMANITE lives as local peacemakers have what is needed for a sustainable peace. These resources aren’t always distributed evenly. Sometimes corruption creates blockages to food, water, or other forms of access. But the problem is rarely an absolute lack of food, clothing, etc that would be improved by shipments from the outside. Unfortunately, foreign aid imports can make things worse, exacerbating corruption and even destroying local economies.
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HUMANITE makes every effort to source everything we use locally, not only within the country itself, but as close to the actual conflict zone as possible. In situations where this breaks down, we issue special calls to action (often for specific medical equipment, medications, etc).

Fund local procurement. Become a member ▸