Throughout 2021, Spirit of America provided long-term and crisis-response support via 56 projects in 25 countries, facilitating the safety and security of nearly 650,000 civilians. Perhaps the most visible example of its work came in August, when Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul fell to the Taliban. The resulting refugee crisis was an all-hands-on-deck scenario, and Spirit of America used its relationship with US Central Command to help organize flight manifests and get at-risk Afghans to the Kabul airport for evacuation. “There’s no playbook in a situation like that,” says Hake. “But because we could build on the investment that the United States has already made around the world, we could act fast and see large-scale effects from modest investments.”
In addition to helping thousands of civilians evacuate, Spirit of America distributed essential resources like clothing and sanitary products to more than 30,000 evacuees on US military bases in Qatar, Germany, and Kosovo. And when a plane carrying 121 Afghan refugees needed a host organization in order to land, Spirit of America secured landing clearance in Albania. It continues to cover living expenses for all 121 of these evacuees, including 38 children—nearly all of whom have now arrived safely in the United States.