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.”