Today we’d like to introduce you to Hamdi Isse.
Hi Hamdi , so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Our founders didn’t start HDF from a desk. They started it from the field, inside refugee camps, at food distributions, in mobile clinics. That experience showed them pretty quickly that relief alone doesn’t fix anything. Aid comes, attention leaves, and the same cycle repeats.
So HDF was built around a different question than other humanitarian organizations: what does it look like to actually stay? We respond when a crisis hits, and then we stay long enough to address what made people vulnerable in the first place. That’s been the approach from day one, across 27 countries now, and it hasn’t changed. Everyone who supports HDF is part of that answer. You’re not just funding relief. You’re funding what comes after.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Starting later than a lot of the established names in this space means you’re asking donors and partners to trust you before you have the track record to point to. That’s a real challenge.
Scaling has its own pressure too. Growing across 27 countries while making sure the quality and the values actually travel with you, that’s not automatic. And then there’s something we don’t talk about enough, the weight of having staff working in active conflict zones. These are real people operating in genuinely dangerous conditions. Keeping them safe, supported, and resourced is something we take seriously and it’s never simple.
But starting later also sharpened us. We weren’t locked into old models. HDF could be built the way we actually believed aid should work from the beginning.
We’ve been impressed with Human Development Fund, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We specialize in the full arc. But if you want to know what we’re known for, I’d start with how we show up in an emergency. We’re talking about getting food and clean water to families within hours of a crisis, not weeks. That speed matters enormously when people depend on us.
Orphan sponsorship is a big part of who we are too. We’re making sure a child has a home, an education, someone looking out for them. That relationship is ongoing.
And then the development side, WASH systems especially. Clean water infrastructure sounds technical but what it actually means is a community that isn’t losing children to waterborne illness anymore. That’s the work we’re most proud of because you can see it compound over time. You build it once and it serves people for decades.
All of it is rooted in the same Islamic values. Dignity, trust, cooperation. We partner locally because we believe communities already have what they need to lead their own futures. Our job is to support that, not replace it.
What are your plans for the future?
We just want to keep showing up. The communities we’re already serving, we want to go deeper there, do more, do it better. There’s still so much need in the places we’re already working, and we don’t take lightly the trust people place in us to address it.
We’re also at a really interesting moment as an organization. We’re doing some exciting work around how technology can meet impact in ways that we think could genuinely shift how we operate. Better visibility into projects, better connection between donors and the communities they’re supporting, faster and more accountable delivery on the ground. We’re sharing more about that on our website and we’d encourage anyone who cares about this space to go take a look.
But beyond all of that, what we’re really looking forward to is the work itself. New projects, deeper roots in the communities we’re already in, and continuing to build something that we’re proud of and that our donors can be proud of too.
Stay close. Follow the projects, see the work as it unfolds. There’s a lot coming and we want you to be part of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hdfund.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humandevelopmentfund/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/humandevelopmentfund/about/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/human-development-fund/?viewAsMember=true
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HumanDevelopmentFund
