Who We Are
We're humanitarian professionals who spent over 15 years working for international NGOs across Myanmar and Southeast Asia, supporting local organizations through some of the region's most challenging crises.
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During that time, we watched a troubling pattern unfold: the organizations with the deepest community trust and strongest cultural knowledge—local humanitarian groups—were systematically locked out of funding pathways, forced to work through international intermediaries, and rarely given the platform to share their stories authentically.
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We saw their work reduced to bullet points in donor reports. We watched them navigate impossible bureaucracy just to access resources. We heard their stories—powerful, nuanced, human—and knew they deserved better than being filed away.
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So we built Story of Helping: infrastructure that removes the intermediary, preserves local decision-making, and transforms humanitarian work into compelling documentary storytelling. We're doing what we did for INGOs—but this time, giving local organizations the platform, audience, and resources they deserve.
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Our team includes senior humanitarian leaders with decades of combined experience establishing operations, managing large-scale programs, and building capacity across Myanmar and Southeast Asia—including an Asia-Paciific Obama Leader and certified regional trainers. We speak local languages, understand contexts deeply, and have the operational expertise to make this model work.
The Gap We Saw
During our years working across Myanmar and Thailand, we watched humanitarian need grow exponentially while traditional funding sources stagnated or withdrew.
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Globally, 362 million people need humanitarian assistance. Yet institutional donors—governments, UN agencies, major foundations—can't keep pace with growing need. Funding concentrates in high-profile crises while "forgotten" contexts receive minimal resources. And local organizations, despite having deep community trust and expertise, receive less than 3% of humanitarian funding directly.
We saw brilliant, dedicated local teams doing exceptional work, but spending more time on donor reporting than community service. We saw their stories—powerful, nuanced, human—reduced to bullet points in reports that three people would read.
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This wasn't anyone's fault. The traditional system evolved to serve institutional donors with specific requirements, and INGOs fill a necessary intermediary role in that system. But it created an unintended consequence: the organizations best positioned to help were locked out of diverse funding pathways and couldn't access resources without sacrificing decision-making authority.
So we built an alternative.
Why Myanmar (for now)
We're starting with Myanmar because that's where we worked, where we have relationships, and where we understand context deeply. Humanitarian work requires more than professional skills—it requires understanding local dynamics, speaking the language, and knowing when to listen rather than advise.
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Our team brings both: professional expertise in project management, financial oversight, and content creation, combined with years of in-country experience and language capabilities. This combination makes our one-team structure possible—we can provide real implementation support, not just remote oversight.
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We expand through people, not markets. As we grow, we'll add team members with deep expertise in other contexts—Thailand, Bangladesh, Ukraine, or elsewhere. But we won't work somewhere just because there's need or market opportunity. We'll only expand where we can maintain the quality, authenticity, and partnership depth that defines our model.
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For now, that's Myanmar and along the Thailand border. And we'd rather do projects in these contexts exceptionally well than stretch ourselves thin trying to work everywhere.
How We Work
Story of Helping is a humanitarian creative agency. We use Aid Cloud's technology platform (the tools and processes, like Box or Salesforce) but our staff are Story of Helping team members who work directly with local organizations. When you partner with us, you're working with people who understand your context, speak your language, and have done this work alongside you before.
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We handle infrastructure—financial management, implementation support, content production, accountability reporting—so local organizations can focus on what they do best: understanding their communities and delivering culturally appropriate solutions.
Expansion Philosophy
We're interested in many contexts where local organizations face similar challenges - Ukraine, Bangladesh, and elsewhere. But we'll only work where we can maintain the depth, quality, and authenticity that defines our model. This means we need to first find those humanitarian professionals who have an understanding of the context, can speak the language and can properly provide support in those locations before launching stories from these other contexts.