Thomas Byrnes
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thomasbyrnes.bsky.social
Thomas Byrnes
@thomasbyrnes.bsky.social
190 followers 1.3K following 26 posts
Learning to code, learning to write and sharing thoughts from 14 years in the humanitarian sector
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Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
What are the implications of #USAID (and now UK + others) funding cuts on #socialprotection as a sector, often 'competing' with others for funding? As promised, here is the blog summarising the discussions on the 'SO WHAT' for our sector socialprotection.org/discover/blo...
socialprotection.org
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
@socialprotection.org @thomasbyrnes.bsky.social @knoxvydmanov.bsky.social desperately trying to get the Bluesky SP community to bloom as I would love to drag the conversation away from Linkedin, but it has not been easy.. :)
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
Not content to only exacerbate human suffering domestically, the US is also helping collapse humanitarianism globally, as @markleongoldberg.bsky.social and
@thomasbyrnes.bsky.social discuss here:
I would assume that as both eu counties and us combined have similar gdps and aimed to give similar amounts of odi as a % of gdp the totals would be quite close, for me the key issue is that with the us stopped in short term and dramatically reduced in the long the immediate impact on operations etc
Hi Chris so the most comprehensive data set for us foreign assistance is foreignassistance.gov I would recommend downloading there data sets incase they are taken down in the future as they are not being updated since the new administration came into office
FA.gov
ForeignAssistance.gov is the U.S. government’s flagship website for making U.S. foreign assistance data available to the public. It serves as the central resource for budgetary and financial data prod...
foreignassistance.gov
For funding to humantiran agencies I had it has us 42% eu member states 19.5% eu commission including echo 8.2% so eu total 27.7ish% this is based on the un ocha data of funding committed to humanitarian responses and tracked via fts
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
This is a crisis response app. If a diplomat is in danger, for any reason, this sends their whereabouts to diplomatic security in country and DC
USAID employees overseas are no longer able to access their government security app, which gives them this error code (images provided to me by USAID worker)
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
Senator Andy Kim just went to the USAID building, talked to the security guard there to confirm employees are being barred entry, and then did a press gaggle right there in front to call it out.

This is doing something. This is making an effort on messaging. Other Democratic lawmakers: take notes.
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
rep raskin speaks to a crowd of 100 outside usaid hq

“we don’t have a fourth branch of government called elon musk…you don’t control the money of the american people. the united states congress does.”
NE Syria aid cutoff: Humanitarian catastrophe unfolding. Sr. Official: Food, water, medical care vanishing. Camps in chaos. Read, share, act: discuss.aidgpt.org/t/northeast-... or www.linkedin.com/pulse/northe... #Syria #AidCuts #HumanitarianCrisis
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
Somebody yelled at me for posting about Ganymede instead of /the state of things/ last night.

I know we’re (almost) all on the same page here, but a Bluesky without cute cats, science facts, and dumb jokes would be bad for everyone.
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes
I know we all have disaster fatigue, but the reason why historic LA fires get so much coverage is because there are more people in greater LA county than in *most US states*
Reflecting on AI in 2024 & Looking Ahead to 2025

Check out my latest blog on:
• How AI is reshaping workflows
• Why “off-the-shelf” tools matter in humanitarian work
• Key challenges for 2025

Read the blog at :
discuss.aidgpt.org/t/reflecting...

#TechForGood #HumanitarianTech
AidGPT
Leveraging AI to transform humanitarian assistance and development work.
aidgpt.org
Reposted by Thomas Byrnes