“We had to layoff 10 percent of our team due to lack of payments from the US government and lack of clarity on what the future holds for our life-saving humanitarian mission,” Navyn Salem, Edesia’s founder and CEO, wrote in the Monday post.
The announcement was made in posts to Facebook on Friday and Monday .
“Every day, we wait for the wire but we couldn’t wait any longer and we were forced to scale down Edesia,” Salem wrote on Friday.
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Salem did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday. The social media posts did not state a specific number of employees who were let go, but according to its website, Edesia employed 150 people from 25 countries.
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Since 2010, the nonprofit, named after the Roman goddess of food, has provided 25 million children with Plumpy’Nut, a fortified peanut-based paste, to combat severe malnutrition, often when children are weeks away from death.
Edesia relies heavily on funding – some 30 to 80 percent of its budget – from the United States Agency for International Development, the federal agency that has come into the crosshairs of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump Administration’s team tasked with slashing the size of the federal government.
Last month, the food was briefly left sitting in Edesia’s warehouses, waiting to be shipped, after USAID instituted a stop-work order. The order was later rescinded.
On March 2, Elon Musk, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead DOGE, wrote on his social media platform, X, USAID’s contract with Edesia “had already been restored last week and they should receive payment this coming week.”
Salem told the Globe that day the nonprofit had not yet been paid by USAID for past orders, and noted shippers of the food products were struggling and were at risk of shutting down.
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In a Facebook post on Friday, Salem wrote “Edesia’s production lines are built to save the lives of 415 starving babies every hour.”
“For 15 years, those lines never stopped. That’s one of the greatest gifts the American people have given to the world’s most vulnerable families, a declaration that families and babies come first,” Salem wrote. “But now, for the past 12 days, those lines have been running at very low capacity, powered only by your donations. It’s heartbreaking because every hour of delay means the difference between life and death.”
Material from previous Globe stories was used in this report.
Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com.
Edesia Nutrition lays off 10 percent of staff amid funding delays
