A humanitarian organization founded by a Redondo Beach couple is still feeding and coaching thousands of refugee children across Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Mexico — nearly five years after its founders, Gabriel Stauring and Katie-Jay Scott, were killed in a car crash in Manhattan Beach. But the charity they built, iACT, is now navigating a global funding landscape that has grown dramatically more hostile to humanitarian work.
Stauring and Scott founded iACT in response to the Darfur crisis, a conflict rooted in the semi-desert plateau of western Sudan, using soccer to give structure and skills to refugees living in camps, shelters and poverty, according to the Los Angeles Times. The couple died in a four-car crash in Manhattan Beach on November 23, 2021, as reported by the Daily Breeze. Today the organization they left behind operates soccer academies serving more than 5,000 children across four countries on two continents, per the Los Angeles Times account, while its Little Ripples preschool program enrolls 1,800 children and served 475,000 meals to students and staff last year.
A Camp Visit That Changed a Life
Among those who credit the couple directly is Mohammed Annour, who fled war in Sudan for a refugee camp in Chad at age 9 after his family escaped in 2003. Stauring and Scott visited his camp in 2011, and three years later the ConIFA World Football Cup brought a 20-man Darfur United team — assembled by iACT with players from 12 camps — to Östersund, Sweden, according to the Los Angeles Times. Annour, now 33, said he likely would have died had he stayed in the camp and credited Scott and Stauring with giving him the chance to leave.
Darfur United lost both of its matches in Östersund by a combined score of 39-0, but the result on the scoreboard mattered little next to what happened off it: thirteen players applied for and received asylum in Sweden following the tournament, according to Östersunds FK. Most of the Darfur United squad chose to stay in Östersund rather than return to their camps, and the Swedish government granted them asylum. Eight of those original players went on to hold full-time jobs and build independent lives in the Östersund community, per the same club account.
From Refugee Camp to Swedish Soccer Pitch
Those former players later formed the backbone of ÖFK Cosmos, an integration team that advanced as high as the fifth division of Swedish soccer, Östersunds FK reports. Annour now plays amateur soccer in that fifth division himself, working as a quality control inspector for a textile company and juggling three jobs to support his two sons while living in Sweden. Moubarak Abdallah, who was introduced to soccer by Scott and Stauring, now coaches the Mighty Cosmos and raises a family in Sweden. Mighty Cosmos players became citizens, married, had children and integrated into the local community, and their civic work received one of Sweden's most prestigious awards this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“They wanted to help our ideas shine, to [give] other people hope. They were listening to what I needed,” Abdallah said of Scott and Stauring, according to the Los Angeles Times, adding that iACT gave refugees a chance to change their lives. Darfur United and ÖFK created a fundraising scheme called Zero Point One in 2017 to support soccer academies back in the camps, where, per Östersunds FK, boys and girls still get daily access to basic coaching, education, friendship, equipment and care.
Aid Dollars Shrink as Need Grows
While the Östersund success stories show what iACT's work can produce, the broader funding picture has darkened considerably. The Trump administration cut congressionally approved spending for programs previously funded through USAID and restricted immigration and asylum access in the United States, the Los Angeles Times reports, while the administration also instituted a travel ban and entry restriction list on Chad in June 2025. Chad's government, in turn, revoked visas for American citizens, including aid workers.
European countries made their own largest development-assistance cut in a decade in 2025, slashing contributions by 13.8%, according to the Los Angeles Times. Those reductions compound a funding crisis documented independently by the UNHCR, which reported that global humanitarian contributions to the agency fell 24% between 2024 and 2025, dropping from $5.178 billion to $3.932 billion. As of July 31, 2026, UNHCR had received just $2.716 billion — 32% of its requirement for the year — leaving a $5.789 billion funding gap. The agency warned that nearly 8.3 million forcibly displaced and stateless people risk losing access to direct assistance in 2026 at current funding levels, and that the share of tightly earmarked funding, which limits flexibility, has risen from 19% in 2022 to 51% of all contributions through July.
UNHCR itself has warned, as of October 2026, that the gap between humanitarian needs and donor contributions keeps widening — a trend the agency says is already delaying refugee registration, closing safe spaces and gender-based-violence services, and scaling back or suspending child-protection programs worldwide.
Camps Still Unstable as Sudan's War Grinds On
The stakes extend well beyond any single charity's balance sheet. Sudan's conflict has displaced more than 15 million people over 23 years of fighting, the Los Angeles Times reports. More than 1.3 million people are stranded in camps across eastern Chad. Conflicts in Syria, Gaza and Ukraine have pushed the worldwide refugee population to nearly 42 million, out of roughly 69 million people displaced globally, per the Times, while anti-immigrant protests in South Africa have separately forced more than 178,000 people to flee to Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria and other countries.
Eastern Chad now hosts 360,000 refugees, with numbers climbing because of the violence in Sudan, according to the UEFA Foundation, which notes that iACT's Little Ripples preschool and its Refugees United Soccer Academy remain the only programs in the region addressing gaps in early education and sport for children ages 3 to 13. Little Ripples was co-created in 2013 after discussions with the refugee community in eastern Chad.
Despite the financial headwinds, Weir and the rest of iACT's team say the organization needs to sustain its current refugee-led programs, which co-create services alongside the people living in these conflict-affected communities rather than imposing them from outside. The group plans to hold its annual fundraising event in Manhattan Beach next month — in the same coastal community where Stauring and Scott once lived and worked before building a soccer program that, half a world away, is still changing lives in Chad and in Sweden.
