The five years I worked for Winrock International were some of the most adventurous and fulfilling of my career. I was part of a team tasked to tell the story of this wonderful organization, founded to help those at home and abroad, and I jumped in feet first.

Winrock implements USAID contracts, which do everything from countering human trafficking to helping set up a fleet of electric vehicles in one of the more polluted cities of the world, Kathmandu. I interviewed trafficking survivors, I rode around in the back of a small electric bus driven by a pathbreaking group of women in Nepal. I saw firsthand the good that USAID projects accomplish.

I’ll never forget my first trip for Winrock, glimpsing on the side of a truck the words that would from then on never fail to move me. “USAID from the American People.” The work I was doing with Winrock allowed me to see the work that was happening around the world in my name, in the names of all of us.

For just just 1 percent of the U.S. budget, the United States Agency for International Development sows a tremendous amount of goodwill. It’s evidence of our values, yes, but it’s also part of the soft power on which the world runs.

Yesterday the Agency for International Development was closed and its website shut down. Employees were told to work from home. The president has said he would like to shutter USAID as an independent agency. The head of the new Department of Government Efficiency called it a “criminal organization.”

The crime is what’s happening now, both to this agency and to the people who depend on it. And have no doubt: In the end, those people are all of us.