Covid 19

Grassroots Women at the Frontline of COVID19

The Huairou Commission stands in solidarity with grassroots women around the world in their on-going efforts to build community resilience to pandemics, climate change and other disasters.

Grassroots women bring experience and innovation in their approaches to reducing disaster risk, responding to and recovering from crises.

To support and scale their effort, we have established a $100,000 COVID19 Community Resilience Fund. The money will be directed towards our members’ grassroots efforts to organize, support their communities and governments in meeting immediate needs during the pandemic and to position women from poor urban and rural communities as partners rather than beneficiaries of the economic transitions to follow.

We are soliciting matching contributions

Learn more about Community Resilience Fund
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Letter from the Chair

Dear Huairou Supporters,

We hope that you and your loved ones are keeping safe and healthy through this unprecedented global COVID19 pandemic.

We take comfort knowing that women are organizing across your communities by taking up leadership and caregiving roles to keep people fed and alive and providing.

As the media reports hourly on the numbers of people infected and mortality rates, our grassroots women’s groups are reporting their experiences across our network.

From Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, leaders are sharing information daily on the numbers of families struggling to produce, access and afford nutritious food and practice safe hygiene in settlements with limited public toilets and water pumps.

Noting that women are tasked with extreme caregiving responsibilities in response to school closings, unemployment and curfews and require support, the increased incidence of violence against women is doubly alarming and intolerable.

But we stay resilient and organize to provide support, where it is most needed.

Women leaders are working directly with their local authorities to increase the number of recognized local food ration card holders so more households in informal settlements have stable food supplies. We use resilience funds to stock supplies (medical and food) and distribute to most needy in our communities. We monitor health and violence in communities; we deliver psychological and economic support to those most affected.

Women organize to make their own hygienic and protective supplies, teach community members on prevention and safety.

We share the little and all we have with those who have lost the little and all they had.

We turn to all our allies in government, philanthropy, finance, development and humanitarian fields, to support the grassroots women’s effort around the world.

We must commit to policies and programs that consciously require and resource the participation and leadership of grassroots women’s organizations who live and work in urban and rural poor communities on the frontlines of the pandemic.

Violet Shivutse,

Chair of the Governing Council

Read the entire letter here

Follow our facebook page and our news for regular updates on the COVID19 response work from grassroots women across the world.