Non-profit organization Team Humanity USA Founder Ayat Abuznade was recently awarded two Anthem Awards: the Humanitarian Product Leader of the Year and Humanitarian Service Leader of the Year. The awards are in recognition of her exceptional leadership in spearheading the team’s humanitarian work being done worldwide, including Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, regions that are very challenging to penetrate and not many organizations will dare to go to. Yet, team Humanity USA, under the leadership of its committed and passionate founder Ayat Abuznade, chose to penetrate these war-stricken nations to bring help and hope to their displaced citizens.
Team Humanity USA was instrumental in helping more than a thousand refugees from Ukraine reach safety after Russian President Vladimir Putin directed the invasion of its neighboring country. With Ayat at the forefront of ensuring that her organization helps as many refugees as possible, Team Humanity USA successfully brought Ukrainians to safety through a 16-hour trip when the war initially broke. Ayat and her team used five buses to shuttle 200 refugees a day from conflict zones such as Mykolaiv and Odesa, the latter being Ukraine’s third-largest city. Thanks to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other well-meaning organizations with access to satellite imagery, safer routes were eventually established to get refugees out of Ukraine faster.
Ayat established Team Humanity USA in 2019 after spending time at Zaatari Refugee Camp as a volunteer a year before. Located between Syria and Jordan, Zaatari is known as the largest refugee camp for Syrians, and it has steadily transformed into a permanent settlement over the past years. During her time at Zaatari, Ayat worked closely with several refugee families and witnessed first-hand the damaging effects of war on the world’s most vulnerable people. Ayat was particularly moved by the devastating story of Yaseen, an 8-year-old boy who lost an arm due to a missile attack. Meeting Yaseen changed Ayat’s life forever.
Armed with her experiences as a volunteer at Zaatari and a different perspective of the world, Ayat returned to her home in Chicago, where she started working on developing what would become her newfound mission in life – a non-profit organization dedicated to making a lasting difference in the lives of children and their families fleeing conflict areas.
The main focus of Team Humanity USA is to provide emergency aid and relief assistance. It has different active projects across the globe. It envisions a world where it is able to alleviate human suffering by advocating for basic human rights, promoting human welfare, and creating opportunities for communities in despair. Among its missions is to be able to respond to major emergencies, fight disease and poverty, and nurture and promote human welfare.
Team Humanity USA also has a Water Well Project in Africa as a response to the water scarcity resulting from climate change, poverty, and a growing population, affecting more than 400 million Africans. At present, the target is to provide a water well in different villages in Kenya that will allow 500 people daily steady access to clean and safe water, enabling them to have better hygiene, prevent the spread of diseases, help decrease the infant mortality rate, and improve food security.
Other projects open for financial donations are Impact Lebanon, Warm Children’s Hearts, and Christmas Hope Project.
Ayat has been in the field for some time now, and she finds it challenging to return to the United States after coming from a war-stricken region. Nevertheless, she still finds the courage to push forward without expecting anything in return. Ayat is committed to growing Team Humanity USA so that she can initiate programs that will help thousands more people in need of humanitarian emergency crisis care in the many years to come.
