From the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit:
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Speakers:
Andrew Morley, President and Chief Executive Officer, World Vision International
Henrietta H. Fore, Executive Director, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Amy Goldman, Chief Executive Officer and Chair, GHR Foundation
Azza Karam, Secretary-General, Religions for Peace
Niels Lund, Vice-President, Health Advocacy, Novo Nordisk A/S

Faith leaders and actors play a crucial role in response and recovery during crises and are essential partners in reaching and caring for the vulnerable.

Discover and debate how to scale up:
1. Health literacy in crisis
2. Emergency healthcare delivery
3. Humanitarian response
4. Multistakeholder partnerships

This session supports the ongoing work of the Social Determinants of Health Project and the Forum’s Civil Society Community.

• Even before COVID-19, global progress towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals had fallen behind.
• Social entrepreneurs and other front-line actors have a key role to play and need to be given greater prominence and support at this time.
• Collaborative movements and alliances in the social enterprise sector are critical to building a sector wide agenda with collective messages to influence key stakeholders

Just as the COVID-19 healthcare worker is at the front line for the protection of human life, so the social entrepreneur is at the front line for the protection of socio-economic wellbeing. As such, they have their work cut out for them. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed critical flaws in our social and economic systems, with particularly devastating consequences for the billions who are marginalized.

Global goals to reduce poverty and curb climate change have stalled or gone backwards in the face of COVID-19. Even before the global pandemic, few countries were even close to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the target date of 2030, with the Social Progress Index estimating last year that this date had been pushed back to 2073. The pandemic is likely to set progress back even further, unless drastic action is taken. The World Bank projects that the global economy will shrink by 5-8% predicting that over 100 million people are at immediate risk of slipping into poverty. Already, education inequality and food insecurity are rising due to the lack of resources and widespread school closures. And glaringly, healthcare systems are being overwhelmed, erasing the hard-fought gains in public health. Now is the time to do things differently.

If there are rays of encouragement that reflect the resilience of the human spirit, it is in the collective actions that are arising as the world reacts and responds to the pandemic. One such response is the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset initiative, a commitment to jointly and urgently rebuild the foundations of our economic and social system for a more fair, sustainable, and resilient future. International organizations, such as the IMF and UN, have been joined by private corporations, like Microsoft and Mastercard, to support the Forum’s call to reevaluate global social and economic systems.

But to achieve the Great Reset, it will be necessary to bridge the gap between public and private interests and institutions. This is where the social entrepreneur and the social enterprise sector can make an impact – they have already been active in this space for decades, although their work is not often recognized or supported. Social entrepreneurs serve as a crucial social safety net for the systemic weaknesses, inequalities and market failures that are now apparent. In recent months they have repeatedly demonstrated that, as first responders in this crisis, they have been able to adapt at speed and share their knowledge and assets where they are needed most.

While governments enact policies and launch national-scale initiatives with multilateral partners and donors, corporations and impact investors funnel resources to address a variety of challenges, it is social entrepreneurs who often have the trust of those in vulnerable communities required to bring about lasting change on the ground. After all, they have been delivering significant progress on challenges like food security, employment, gender equity, sanitation and health in those communities for many years already.

Top-down ecosystem players must recognize the role of these front-line leaders and empower and align resources to reinvigorate progress towards the goals of economic inclusion, health, education and social cohesion.

In mobilizing these important actors at this critical time, initiatives such as Catalyst 2030 – an international consortium of more than 200 NGOs, social enterprises, intermediaries, funders, and other social change innovators that have pledged to collaborate to help countries achieve the SDGs by 2030 – are doing critical work. In its recent report, “Getting From Crisis to Systems Change,” Catalyst 2030 outlined the central role that social enterprises must continue to play in achieving the SDGs.

The COVID-19 Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, hosted by the World Economic Forum and Schwab Foundation, is also fostering collaboration across impact-focused companies and global leaders. Comprising more than 60 global organizations – collectively representing over 50,000 social enterprises globally and touching the lives of close to 1 billion people – the Alliance has set itself a dual goal of supporting social enterprises during COVID-19 and its aftermath, and of injecting their voices and expertise into the ‘great reset’ agenda. Its belief: The decades of experiences of these social entrepreneurs are vital in supporting vulnerable communities and in forging a ‘new normal’ in how capital markets and international development actors operate.

To achieve the Great Reset, we will need more than just the actions of the those considered powerful. The proximity of social entrepreneurs to the needs of communities as well as their unique innovative power of social entrepreneurs, may just be what we all need to achieve a shift-change in our ability to transform our world and to guarantee a sustainable future for generations to come:

Through support and recognition of their critical role, social entrepreneurs can be the bridge to recovery and the adoption of new models in education, workforce participation, gender empowerment, expanded access to life-saving products, and digital livelihoods, providing the socio-economic equality that our world needs. The time to get behind social entrepreneurs and let them play their part is now.

To join in action with us, visit and share your commitments with the COVID Response Alliance.

Janet Longmore, Founder and CEO, Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT)
Jonathan Jackson, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Dimagi
Carolien de Bruin, Lead, COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, World Economic Forum
Amy Goldman, Chief Executive Officer and Chair, GHR Foundation

GHR envisions a world where all children—especially those at risk of losing or without parental care—are living in a stable, positive, long-term family or family-like environment.

Decades of research show that living in institutions is harmful to children. Interactions with nurturing, stable, and long-term caregivers are crucial for building the architecture of a child’s developing brain. When children lack these kinds of relationships and interactions, the foundations for brain development are undermined— and large care institutions generally lack the necessary environment for children to thrive and develop.

October 2nd, 2020 marks the launch of Catholic Care for Children International (CCCI) under the auspices of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) – one of many faith groups leading policy reform and family-based alternatives to institutional care. Catholic sisters are well-positioned to realize the best possible outcomes for vulnerable children and children living outside of family care by combining the Catholic tradition of care with insights from contemporary research. Long-time partners of GHR in this work, they are leading the global movement in care reform to establish a network of women and men religious and reduce recourse to institutional care, as marked by the launch of CCCI. 

“The devastation of COVID-19 has awakened the world to a crisis of broken systems. And whether someone is a social entrepreneur or a member of a faith community or both at once, the Alliance supports these community leaders and global-scale problem-solvers as they prepare the future they envision – one that alleviates suffering and promotes human dignity for all."
                                                                                                     – Amy Goldman, Chief Executive Officer and Chair

The COVID-19 crisis has shed light on the numerous challenges social entrepreneurs and faith actors face as they work tirelessly to safeguard and support the livelihoods of vulnerable populations.
Many are at risk of failure and need significant capital and non-financial support to effectively protect and support the vulnerable communities whom they serve.

The COVID-19 Social Enterprise Action Agenda calls on supporting intermediaries, investors, corporations, funders, and government institutions to recognize and support social entrepreneurs and faith actors as vital leaders in the immediate response to the crisis, our collective recovery, and in shaping a new socio-economic reality.
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Religions for Peace’s Multi-Religious Humanitarian Fund, seed-funded by GHR, is bringing together diverse religious leaders, communities, and institutions through affiliated Interreligious Councils to provide critical humanitarian response in the wake of COVID-19. The MRHF is currently financing 20 projects in 20 countries, and RfP announced a new round of applications on August 19th, World Humanitarian Day.

Funded projects were selected based on a track record of interreligious collaboration and experience providing humanitarian relief. Creative proposals raising resources to scale up services, partner with other religious and civic groups, and ensure sustainability of efforts were specifically sought.

Read more...

GHR is partnering boldly as we work to address the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our partners and communities. Via a $1 million gift, the Foundation joins the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard Impact Fund and Wellcome in supporting a collaborative effort to research, develop and bring effective COVID-19 treatments to market quickly and accessibly.  

Building off the momentum across public and private sectors to achieve optimal outcomes for therapeutic solutions, the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator (CTA) aims to fill gaps in the R&D ecosystem, remove barriers to drug development and scale up treatments to address the pandemic, particularly in low-resource settings. CTA is committed to equitable access, ensuring that supported innovations are available and affordable to all.  

The immediate focus of this initiative is to develop therapies that mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and can be made available within this year, while leaving a sustainable infrastructure in place for the long term, ensuring future epidemic and pandemic preparedness.  

UPDATE 09/17/20: On August 20th, Dr. Saphire's  presented GHR-sponsored work to the Neutralizing Antibody Summit held by Operation Warp Speed. Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and all of Operation Warp Speed and NIH are now relying on the data by the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

GHR is honored to provide $1 million in support of the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), a global partnership headquartered at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI). Led by Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., a professor in LJI’s Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research, CoVIC aims to accelerate the discovery, optimization, and delivery of life-saving antibody-based therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. 

“As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown clearly, infectious disease anywhere becomes infectious disease everywhere. Until a vaccine becomes available, we need a way of giving people immediate immunity,” says Dr. Saphire, “and antibody therapy is the way to do it. The support of GHR will help us expand and accelerate the analysis of antibodies from people who have recovered from COVID-19, to understand how they work and deliver the best ones across the globe.” 

The killing of George Floyd sparked an uprising in our community against police brutality and the systemic racism of which it is a symptom. Through our work we’ve come to learn that there is no single answer to end systemic racism and inequity — yet the need for urgent and coordinated action has been made clear, and we are paying attention.
  
In this spirit, GHR has established the Twin Cities Racial Equity Initiative – a program area focused locally on the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Our purpose and values will guide this new focus, which will seek to center and elevate community in eliminating systemic racism. Our long-term goal is to refresh our existing program areas with a focus on racial equity, enabling us to deepen our commitment to racial equity across our program areas.

GHR is simultaneously acting for racial equity on an organizational level. With the guidance of racial equity coaches, staff are engaging in deep reflection on their individual identities, and the unique roles we each play in disrupting systemic racism and the implications this has for our work. We are committed to transforming our organization and our work as we build a more just, equitable future for all. ​

CEO Amy Goldman and GHR join Children's Minnesota and 50+ Minnesota business leaders in committing to investing in substantive change in our organizations, and the communities we serve, in pursuit of equity and justice.
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