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.” 

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

From The World Economic Forum:
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​Forty leading global organizations have united to launch the COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, pooling knowledge, experience and responses to alleviate suffering and advance new models of change for a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable world.

"Social entrepreneurs and their community partners have been working for years to solve market failures and demonstrate more sustainable and inclusive models. These front-line organizations now face bankruptcy and severe constraints while they also innovate and respond to this global pandemic. Through this alliance, members are committing support for social entrepreneurs to protect decades of work in the impact sector,” said François Bonnici, Director and Head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum.

​Alliance members currently support more than 15,000 social entrepreneurs helping 1.5 billion people cumulatively in over 190 countries, working to serve the needs of excluded, marginalized and vulnerable groups – many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. The alliance also aims to coordinate between member organizations and amplify the support for social entrepreneurs under extreme stress by the pandemic.

The development of the alliance is supported by GHR Foundation and is operationally supported by Yunus Social Business, which has been co-developing the initiative. “This pandemic reminds us that our differences in faith, culture or politics are superseded by what we have in common,” said Amy Goldman, Chief Executive Officer and Chair, GHR Foundation, which is helping to underwrite the alliance. 
“And whether someone is a social entrepreneur or a member of a faith community or both at once, we all share a deep desire to alleviate suffering, support human dignity and help people build a better future. This alliance is going to help people do exactly that.”

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From Religions for Peace:

Religions for Peace (RfP) announces the launch of the “Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund” to support multi-religious collaborative efforts around COVID-19 and to stimulate creative interventions that promote resilience within and among diverse communities. 

RfP International, through this Fund, will provide a small seed grant to those Interreligious Councils (IRC) and multi-religious networks who are able to propose programs aimed at enhancing awareness about precautionary measures, supporting vulnerable households, combating discrimination in speech as well as actions, and serving the needs of the most vulnerable individuals and communities. The interreligious platforms who will be awarded this will have a track record of collaboration, and/or humanitarian relief provision.

The seed grants, sponsored by the donors to the Fund, GHR Foundation and Fetzer Institute, encourage interreligious platforms and project partners to raise additional resources to scale up their efforts and ensure the sustainability of these projects.

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 Under the guidance of public health officials to slow the spread of COVID-19, all Minnesota schools were closed beginning Tuesday, March 17, 2020. Recognizing that this action would disproportionately affect marginalized communities, as does crisis in all forms, GHR has made two grants through our Catholic Schools initiative to support those students, and their families, for whom school closures will prove especially challenging.

Both grants have been made to new grantees, who are best suited to address pressing needs at this time:

• Minnesota Independent School Forum, a membership organization that connects and strengthens Minnesota’s independent schools through exceptional training, resources, and advocacy. This grant will enable our Mission schools to access funding for urgent needs, including technology support for distance learning, childcare, and deep cleaning. This grant also supports MISF to become a central resource for all 450 independent schools in the state to access current and future resources. Within 24 hours of school closures, there were requests made for over $192,488, with 50 schools having applied in that same time frame, of which GHR is responding to 37. The average school need is about $2238. 

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• The Sheridan Story, an organization equipped to serve food insecure families with take-home backpacks of food. Recommended by our partners at City Connects, The Sheridan Story has a unique and impressive capacity to ramp up service quickly and effectively, to alleviate some of the strain school closures will have on families who rely on food bags to feed children at night and on weekends. In addition to providing two weeks’ worth of food to our students and their families at a time, the organization has adapted swiftly to the evolving situation to keep its volunteers safe and develop new distribution networks.

These have been rapid response grants, aimed at addressing the most immediate needs. As GHR looks ahead to anticipate other emerging requirements and adapt to these unique and unprecedented circumstances in the longer term, we continue to learn about how we might partner boldly to best support our partners and communities.  

GHR joins our peers in philanthropy as a signatory of the Council on Foundations pledge of action, calling on leaders in philanthropy to recognize the critical need to act with fierce urgency to support our nonprofit partners as well as the people and communities hit hardest by COVID-19 and its implications.
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The widespread impacts of the COVID-19  pandemic are a reminder of the deep need for solidarity. By acting together to provide flexibility to our grantee partners, GHR joins our peers in helping them move their essential work forward powerfully and confidently in this critical moment.

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