If you’re struggling to remember positive news about 2024, you’re not alone. Here are 8 stories that inspired us this year and gave us hope for 2025.

The focus on innovation is not new for the IRC. The organisation has improvised, taken risks, and found ingenious ways to help our clients since our founding in the 1930s. Innovation is embedded in the IRC’s work, in real time and in response to scarcity and extreme difficulties. The IRC was one of the first agencies to test and then adopt parenting programmes in crisis-affected areas.  During the Ebola crisis in Liberia, the IRC was the first organisation to bring in an anthropologist to create a community-based monitoring system responsive to local customs.  We were also one of the pioneers of Community Care Management health programs, and have now scaled the approach in South Sudan to reach hundreds of thousands of children.  These are just a few of the incredible innovations the IRC has already pioneered in the sector.

The Board of Directors, Overseers and staff of the International Rescue Committee are deeply saddened by the loss of Bob DeVecchi, our former President and CEO.

Meet fourteen-year-old Mariama. She’s been forced to flee her home in the Central African Republic because armed groups are threatening her village. She recently arrived with her family at a refugee camp in Chad. But that doesn’t mean she’s safe.

In 1984, Raesa,* just 14 years old, left her family in Jordan and moved to Syria with her husband to start a new life. When civil war broke out 28 years later, Raesa was forced to flee with her children, triplets, and seek refuge back in her own country.“We left Syria through the village of Tell Shihab and went to Ramtha [in Jordan]”, Raesa says, who is now the sole breadwinner for her family. Her husband decided to stay behind with his second wife and their family.