Announcing Round Eight of COVID-19 Grants Totaling $2 Million

With this eighth round of grantmaking from the CDP COVID-19 Response Fund, we continue to support domestic and international organizations working on response and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in communities worldwide.
For this round, we awarded $2 million in grants to 14 organizations, focusing on recovery programs. The full breakdown includes $900,000 in domestic (U.S.) grants to five organizations and $1.1 million in international grants to nine organizations:

• Adara Group – $50,000 to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in central Uganda and reduce the potentially catastrophic impacts it will have on delivering essential health services. The funds will go toward protecting and educating frontline health workers at Kiwoko Hospital with the necessary equipment and protocols, and ensuring the maintenance and adaptation of essential facility-based and community outreach health services including maternal, newborn and child health services, HIV, diabetes, immunizations and family planning.
• Communities Unlimited (CU) – $100,000 to expand and deepen the organization’s capacity to respond to small, rural-based businesses affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic. CU will expand its entrepreneurship and lending programs to include a wealth-building component designed to help small, minority-owned businesses prepare for and survive this pandemic and future disruptions.
• Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) – $225,000 to support Public Housing Authorities’ (PHAs) immediate and locally-defined needs, providing vital financial resources and assistance to a cohort of 10 PHAs and prioritizing technical assistance for its 70 PHA members across the country.
• Direct Relief – $150,000 to support the Covid-19 Action Fund for Africa – a collaboration of 30 NGOs including Direct Relief – in their efforts to protect community health workers on the frontlines of response in difficult-to-reach communities.
• DonorsChoose – $375,000 to equip students and teachers with the resources to learn and teach, even as COVID-19 continues to shutter some school buildings and dramatically alter the layout and day-to-day activities of community members. DonorsChoose will leverage this grant to match online donations to projects at schools in low-income communities most affected by the pandemic in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky.
• Internews – $75,000 to improve recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen community resilience in southern Zimbabwe. The grant will support efforts to promote and advocate for freedom of expression and access to information, increase the quality, quantity and reach of independent, evidence-based COVID-19 related information, especially on the needs of women and youth, and build the capacity of young people to raise their voices on issues of health, governance, human rights, migration and climate change.
• Living Water International – $150,000 to reduce the spread and impact of COVID-19 within vulnerable communities in nine sub-Saharan Africa countries. The fund will go toward educating local communities on COVID-19 prevention measures through broad-scale efforts such as training events, local advertising and radio messaging, training church and community leaders on COVID-19 response, including hygiene and sanitation best practice, and supporting local health care facilities through increased water access, hygiene and sanitation supplies and personal protective equipment.
• Marie Stopes International (MSI) – $200,000 to ensure continued access to reproductive and other health services for women and girls and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• National Afterschool Association with Discovery Education – $100,000 will fund the Distance Learning Response Initiative, a collaboration between Discovery Education and the National Afterschool Association, to support high-quality digital content and impactful on-demand professional development for under-resourced schools throughout the United States. The focus is on providing distance learning for students and educators in FL and GA, two hotspot states.
• National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) – $100,000 to support expansion of activities to educate health care professionals and the public about preventing the spread of COVID-19.
• Oxfam – Colombia – $200,000 directed toward two geographic regions in Colombia: Arauca in the northeast, near the Venezuelan border and Bogota. This area has the most number of migrants who have fled the violence and armed conflict in Venezuela. It also accounts for 32% of COVID-19 identified cases in Colombia. Funding will facilitate access to goods and services to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, prevent and bring attention to violence against women, especially refugees, and strengthen community risk management activities associated with the pandemic.
• Plan International – $150,000 to ensure children’s right to education amid the COVID-19 pandemic by improving teachers’ e-learning support skills and improving students’ and their families’ knowledge of online child protection issues so that virtual learning is safe and effective, especially for girls. This will target beneficiaries across Peru.
• Teach for All / Ensina Brasil – $75,000 to improve digital teaching skills through online training to ensure learning continuity and decrease the gap for vulnerable students.
• Wayuu Taya Foundation – $50,000 to access PPE supplies for medical personnel and the most vulnerable communities in the Indigenous region along the northern Venezuela-Colombia border.

With this latest round of grants, the CDP COVID-19 Response Fund has awarded a total of $19.4 million to 133 grantees. This includes several grants made in collaboration with the CDP Midwest Early Recovery Fund and the CDP Global Recovery Fund.

As the U.S. and other parts of the world face a new, sometimes record-breaking, surge in COVID-19 cases, we continue to see the layering of tragic disasters on top of the pandemic. With wildfires, earthquakes, typhoons and hurricanes also wreaking havoc on many parts of the world, it becomes critical that we address the complex issues that occur with these multiple, complex traumas on communities. And all these disasters most disproportionately affect the same populations such as immigrants, migrants, displaced persons, Indigenous people, minorities, low-income communities, women, children, LGBTQ+ and people of color.

I continue to encourage you to stay safe, be kind to one another, be graceful, keep a safe distance (while still being socially close), avoid crowded spaces, and wear a mask to protect yourself and others.