About Near East Foundation
For over a century, the Near East Foundation (NEF) has helped the most vulnerable communities improve their conditions in the face of chronic poverty, conflict, migration and environmental hazards. As the United States’ oldest nonsectarian international development non-governmental organization (NGO), NEF has played a crucial role in establishing the American philanthropic tradition, and pioneered many of the strategies employed by the world’s leading development organizations today. ‘The American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief,’ as NEF was originally known, was founded in 1915 in response to the massive humanitarian crisis precipitated by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Many millions of Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and members of other minority groups were displaced, and over a million and a half died as a result of deportation, forced marches, starvation, and execution. The number would have been significantly higher had it not been for the efforts of U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau and the group of his friends and colleagues that would later become NEF’s founding Board. With the help of then-President Woodrow Wilson, NEF’s founders established a small-scale relief operation and began to solicit donations from the American public.