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In April, UNICEF reported having received just 16 percent of the US $962 million it had requested from United Nations member states to provide desperately needed assistance to 13.8 million people in Sudan, including 7.9 million children.

In May, a study in The Lancet projected that deep cuts to overseas development assistance by the Trump Administration and other Western governments, beginning in 2025, could result in 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030.

In these circumstances, private humanitarian organizations are sometimes the only ones left with the will and the capability to save lives. The most respected of these organizations is undoubtedly Médecins Sans Frontières—recognized worldwide by its acronym, MSF.

Our next Forum guest is a Canadian who has spent more than three decades working for MSF, including in the most senior of leadership roles.

Stephen Cornish has spent a career saving lives around the world: managing humanitarian responses from Chechnya to Sierra Leone, negotiating with warlords to gain access to vulnerable populations, and securing the release of abducted aid-workers.

Most recently, Stephen has served as the General Director of MSF Switzerland, responsible for providing more than $350 million of humanitarian assistance annually.

It will also be of interest to many Salt Spring Islanders that, a decade ago, Stephen took a break from MSF to serve as CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation, where he helped guide one of Canada’s most influential environmental organizations through a period of growing urgency around climate change, biodiversity, and sustainability.

Please join the Salt Spring Forum in warmly welcoming Stephen Cornish, a humanitarian and environmental hero, who will join us for a wide-ranging conversation about the perilous state of the world—and why we must never give up.