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.

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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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From World Economic Forum: 

​In recent months, we have witnessed the courage and sacrifice of so many people delivering healthcare and essential services. At the same time, there has been a sharp wake-up call about gross inequities in testing, economic pain, even survival itself. For much of the world – especially least-developed countries with only one or two doctors for every 10,000 people – the worst of the coronavirus still lies ahead. If this pandemic has revealed anything, it’s that we are globally interdependent.

It is time to pay attention and change course.

A better world – one that nurtures human potential among the least of us – can only grow from the seeds of honest conversation. As the holy texts of all major faiths attest, we reap what we sow. This is especially true in the natural world, where droughts, fierce storms, accelerating extinctions, rising seas and now coronavirus tell us that we are imperiling our own future.
We can’t simply go back to the way things were. Markets are highly inefficient in distributing empathy, compassion, hope and dignity – or even, as many have recently discovered, assigning true economic value with any degree of accuracy. We must build the world we want out of this disruption, so that markets work for the whole of society, not just a few. For what is the purpose of a free market if the people who make it possible are not themselves free? How we earn, how we spend and how we sustain the world and each other need a radical rebalancing.

For example, why are millions of “essential” workers – nurses, garbage collectors, grocery clerks, postal workers – so poorly paid? Why have companies and markets failed so spectacularly at anticipating, let alone balancing, supply and demand for basic protective gear? And how can one even place a monetary figure on the freedom to walk without mortal fear of a passing stranger’s cough, or to attend a loved one’s funeral?

We have always lived in a world of kindness and cruelty, generosity and greed, hope and cynicism, love and hate – all in constant tension. But which of these prevail in our countries, companies and communities ultimately depends upon the candour and courage of the conversations we have with our leaders – and the accountability we insist upon from them.
Now, we must embrace the moral imperative of radical change not just because it is right, but because it is the only practical course of action that can save the world from a worse fate in years to come.

Fortunately, recent events have shown us that rapid and radical change is in fact possible on a mass scale. Our challenge now is to channel and build upon it.

A bold response to this call for change is the COVID-19 Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, a new coalition of innovative social entrepreneurs, foundations, civil society, faith actors, corporations and international organizations, hosted by the Schwab Foundation at the World Economic Forum. Together, we will work towards change on several fronts.

1. Synchronize the response
First, we will marshal and synchronize our response to alleviate the pandemic’s impact on the excluded and most vulnerable populations and engage others in such service.
2. Leverage trust in faith-based organizations
In good times, faith-based organizations and social entrepreneurs provide at least one-third of primary healthcare in many countries in Africa, according to Christian Health Associations. Religions for Peace estimates this figure to be significantly higher in places affected by humanitarian disasters, where governments struggle to cope with needs. These partnerships have established a vital reservoir of trust, and in times of hardship and rapid change, trust is among the most important capital.
3. Add our voice to the Great Transformation
As the World Economic Forum explores the fundamental challenges of creating opportunity, equity, economic growth and sustainability in a post-pandemic world, we will add our voices to the global call for more humane and ecological measures of progress, as well as rules and incentives to transform these high ideals into everyday reality.
4. Understand civic and political life as an expression of love
One value that we believe should guide such conversations is love – a word that makes many political and business leaders strangely uncomfortable. In this context, love is much deeper and broader than a romantic sentiment. It is a courageous acknowledgment of interdependence, even obligation, to one another as fellow human beings. That’s why Pope Francis has identified civic and political life as among the highest possible expressions of love.

Some 800 years ago, Saint Francis of Assisi showed the world that institutions cannot forever cater to the rich and powerful without sacrificing their moral authority, their vital connection with the natural world or their own sense of every life’s intrinsic equality. In modern terms, we would consider him a social entrepreneur – a person who, through deep love and his own organizational abilities, changed the way millions perceived the poor, revitalized the purpose of institutions, restored people’s relationship with nature and demonstrated the enduring power of faith to affect change.

This pandemic is not just a health crisis – it’s also a crisis of faith in many of the assumptions, systems and institutions that have utterly failed us. Without hope and faith in the future, people have little to live for. With faith, however, in all its rich and varied dimensions, anything is possible.

So, let’s get started with the hard work, and hard conversations, together. Because whether you consider yourself an idealist or a realist, the path forward will be hard and steep for years to come. Let’s at least make sure we are headed in a direction that most people can believe in, and rebuild a future of hope, value and possibility for all people and the natural world we call home.


​Fr. Augusto Zampini Davies Adjunct Secretary, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, The Vatican City State

Amy Goldman CEO & Chair, GHR Foundation

François Bonnici Head of Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, World Economic Forum