John: When the U.S.

Agency for international development shutdown, more than 80% of its programs were canceled.

In an attempt to keep the most a cost-effective and life-saving projects up and running, two laid off employees created a website called project resource optimization.

It matches donors with threatened programs.

So far they have kept nearly 80 projects running a nearly 30 countries.

Our reporter sat down with the founders.

Reporter: Thank you so much for joining us.

First up to you, what was it like when you realized that said was going to be essentially shutting down and what were you the most worried about happening after that?

>> It really was a tumultuous time earlier this year.

I think initially we were trying to figure out the impact of what the executive orders would be.

In terms of future programming.

There was a belief that there would be future programming.

Usaid would continue in some way.

After not too long you could really read the tea leaves and understand that the agency as a whole would be shutting down.

I think the scariest part of that, the part that really set us aside a lot of times was when you knew what said had been doing, the importance of some of these programs for global health and survival and crises around the world, the thought of that just blinking out was really scary.

Reporter: As someone inside, as this was happening, we had many advocates for said saying this will lead to instability, hunger, death, but as people who are watching this very closely, what have you seen in terms of the impact on the ground?

>> Unfortunately that is starting to really bear out.

Unfortunately I do not think that we have seen the full E effects of this.

Many of the outcomes that said were set up to support take a long time.

To actually come to fruition.

Immunizations that are not being met, these headlights are consequences.

Where we are seeing the most immediate impact and this is in the humanitarian settings where health and nutrition services are not reaching children who desperately needed.

Reporter: Tell me a little bit more about that.

What quarter -- sort of programs are you connecting funding with?

And what is your criteria for basically picking which programs you are going to seek to connect to new sources of funding?

>> As we understood that actually everything was at risk, I think that forced us to do a really terrible triage and some of these programs we need to be life-saving.

That meant mostly from humanitarian portfolios.

I think the kind of programming we are looking at, it is immunizations for children under five, helping keep global infectious diseases low.

We saw it a few countries programs where the vaccine is starting to be carried.

The technical assistance to be strengthening the outreach of these vaccines.

And then overnight the plug was pulled.

The other one that weighs heavily on my mind, I spent a couple of years working on treating children who are facing acute malnutrition.

This is at risk of starvation.

That usually happens in humanitarian settings like Sudan.

So you saw the supply chain for things like this ready to use food that helps keep children alive, all the sudden being shut down.

And locked-in warehouses.

Reporter: Now you have funding for your platform flowing back into projects across 30 countries.

What is that looking like?

What is it difficult -- was it difficult to get some of these programs back up and running once funding has been paused?

>> Our approach is to really bend to figure out at a rapid triage approach.

What are the programs that are delivering the most impact per dollar spent?

In terms of saving lives?

We are able to do that because there is a huge amount of evidence out there.

Research that has been done to understand what with the inventions in the ways that programs are deliver that can lead to these effective outcomes?

We went out searching for the programs we understood it be delivering the most impact per dollar spent, to reach out to those program to really understand what they were doing and use that information to try to bring in private capital and philanthropy to try to pick up some of those pieces.

We have a few donors in the beginning who do not have that momentum.

As time has gone over the last few months we have seen more and more people come up and step forward and say this is something I really care about and this is a really important thing to do.

Reporter: You have used the word sticking with you a few times, triage, which is about an emergency situation.

Is this a point where this is not become an emergency situation and it becomes something longer-term?

What does the future of this look like?

>> That is not really fully thought out as far as long-term consequences of what is happening.

Unfortunately I do not think a lot of the funding that has currently been cut is coming back in the next year or so.

We have been working really hard over the last year to triage these projects and find those that are most in need of future funding.

We are continuing to do that from now through the beginning of next year.

We are doing a last mad -- to see if there are any projects that met our criteria that we might've missed.

And getting them onto our platform to remove funding.

- - Restore funding.

Next year we are really moving into a new phase where we are focused on what is the design of programs that can lead to the most impact per dollar spent and how do we continue to work with the partners were delivering his work and have been doing so for many years now to streamline the program and continue to do it at the highest possible level and continue to bring more and more?

Reporter: Thank you both so much.

>> Thank you so much.

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