Near East Foundation

The Near East Foundation (NEF), formerly the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (ACASR), then the American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE), and later Near East Relief, is a Syracuse, New York-based American international social and economic development organization.

Founded in 1915, it is the United States’ oldest nonsectarian international development organization and the second American humanitarian organization to be chartered by an act of Congress. Near East Relief organized the world's first large-scale, modern humanitarian project in response to the Armenian Genocide. Known as the Near East Foundation since 1930, NEF pioneered many of the strategies employed by the world’s leading development organizations. In the past 100 years NEF has worked with partner communities in more than 40 countries. The foundation had organised the world’s first great humanitarian project of the United States, in the beginning of the 20th century.

The Near East Foundation's mission is to help build more sustainable, prosperous, and inclusive communities in the Middle East and Africa through education, governance, and economic development initiatives. Every member of the NEF field staff is from the region in which they work.

NEF is an operational NGO with projects in nine countries: Armenia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Mali, Morocco, Palestine, Senegal and Sudan. In these countries, NEF works with disadvantaged social groups including people coping with conflict and climate change, facing exclusion from civic life, and isolated by their environment.

Working with local partners, NEF programs directly improve lives by helping vulnerable people overcome poverty and other challenges through development initiatives that deliver short-term solutions and build change in the long-term. The organization has four core program areas: Peacebuilding, Civic Engagement and Education, Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management, and Microenterprise Development.

NEF activities are rooted in its "Knowledge, Voice, and Enterprise" framework. This holistic approach is guided by the principle that to take a leadership role in the development of their communities and countries, individuals require opportunities and tools: the knowledge to participate in civic and economic life, a voice in public decisions that affect their wellbeing, and a means of making a meaningful living.

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