Help us close our doors by building a world that needs less aid

At first glance, this title may seem unusual coming from a humanitarian foundation. Yet the greatest success any humanitarian organisation can achieve is not to expand its programmes, increase its budgets, or extend its reach to more countries. It is to reach a day when its mission has been fulfilled — when people no longer need its services.

On World Humanitarian Day, we usually pause to honour the efforts made to save lives, ease suffering, and respond to crises. These efforts deserve our deepest respect. But the occasion also invites us to consider a more difficult question: What do we ultimately want humanitarian work to achieve? Do we aspire to manage crises indefinitely, or to help build communities with the strength and capacity to overcome them?

When the first organised humanitarian initiatives emerged more than a century and a half ago, their purpose was not to create a permanent sector. They arose because human suffering demanded a response, and from a simple conviction: human dignity should never be held hostage to war, poverty, or disaster.

In the decades since, humanitarian action has evolved on an extraordinary scale. It has saved millions of lives, helped children return to school, enabled families to restore their livelihoods, and stood beside entire communities through their most difficult moments.

And yet crises continue to grow. Millions of people still lack access to education, healthcare, security, and stability. This is where the true challenge lies.

Some of the greatest successes are measured not by what we see, but by what has been prevented: a crisis that did not deepen, a child’s education that was not interrupted, a family that did not become permanently dependent on assistance, and a community able to withstand adversity without losing everything.

The true success of humanitarian work is therefore not measured only by the number of crises to which we respond, but also by the suffering we help prevent and the number of people who no longer need assistance.

Humanitarian action should not be measured by the volume of aid it delivers, but by its ability to reduce the need for aid.

A school is not an end in itself. It is the beginning of a future in which children can continue learning without interruption. Support given to a family fulfils its purpose when that family can stand on its own and shape its future with confidence and dignity. Even emergency response is not complete unless it opens the path to recovery, then stability, and ultimately development.

At its heart, humanitarian work is an investment in people’s ability to rise, not simply a response to their suffering.

Our responsibility therefore extends beyond offering immediate help. It includes strengthening resilience, expanding access to education, healthcare, and livelihoods, and embedding the values of solidarity, compassion, and shared responsibility within societies.

It means helping to build communities in which giving becomes part of the culture, and in which standing beside one another becomes a value passed from one generation to the next and shared across countries and communities.

Our purpose is to contribute to societies where solidarity and collective responsibility are part of everyday life, and where humanitarian action is not merely an exceptional response to crises, but a natural expression of a culture that believes in human dignity and every person’s right to opportunity and a decent life.

The Big Heart Foundation will continue to carry this responsibility for as long as there is a person who needs someone to stand beside them. We will continue investing in people because it is the most sustainable path towards a more stable and equitable future.

But we will also continue to hold on to a dream that may sound unusual.

A day when no child needs someone to help them return to the classroom. When no family must wait for assistance to secure the basic necessities of life. When no community is forced to begin again from nothing after every crisis.

Because our goal is not to become the largest humanitarian organisation in the world.

Our goal is to help build a world that needs fewer humanitarian organisations.

That is the day we will consider our mission accomplished.

And so, on World Humanitarian Day, we make a request that may seem unusual:

Help us close our doors.

Not today. Not tomorrow.

But on the day our existence is no longer necessary because the world has become more just, more resilient, and more capable of protecting people and giving every person the opportunity to live with dignity.

Until that day comes, we will remain where we must be — beside people, wherever they are and whatever circumstances they face.

We will continue opening doors for others, until the day no one needs to knock on them.

Mariam Al Hammadi is an Advisory Board Member at The Big Heart Foundation