Medic Mobile

Fellows: Isaac Holeman and Josh Nesbit

Medic Mobile launched and stewards the Community Health Toolkit, a collaborative effort to support the development of digital health initiatives in the hardest-to-reach areas. In a recent statement, they shared “Medic Mobile has been focused on supporting global preparedness and response efforts in solidarity with the partners, health workers and communities that we serve.” Their response includes working closely with Ministry of Health partners, evolving existing digital health systems, and coordinating with the wider digital health community. https://medicmobile.org/blog/covid-19-and-medic-mobiles-response

Chordoma Foundation

Fellow: Josh Sommer

The Chordoma Foundation and their Medical Advisory Board is providing guidance and support to chordoma patients: https://www.chordomafoundation.org/learn/coronavirus-covid-19-and-chordoma/

MyH20

Fellow: Charlene Ren

MyH20 has been on the ground sharing information and advocating for the needs of rural communities in China http://www.myh2o.org/

Talking Points

Fellow: Heejae Lim

TalkingPoints provides a family engagement platform with two-way translation, coaching and content. They are offering TalkingPoints for Schools and Districts site licenses for free through the end of the school year to high-need schools and districts. https://talkingpts.org/here-to-help-talkingpoints-for-schools-and-districts-free/1383/

Detroit Justice Center

Fellow: Amanda Alexander

Detroit Justice Center is intensely focused on advocacy and action in the US state of Michigan on evictions, foreclosures, jail releases/reducing jail and prison populations, and more. https://www.detroitjustice.org/blog/covid19

Additional ongoing policy demands as part of a consortium of community-based organizations at https://micovidcommunity.com/

Op-Ed: Coronavirus policy must account for those in Michigan jails and prisons
https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2020/03/22/coronavirus-michigan-jails-and-prisons/2887200001/

Additionally, the Detroit Justice Center filed a federal class action lawsuit to get medically vulnerable people released from the Wayne County Jail and protect the health of incarcerated people: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/05/05/wayne-county-jail-coronavirus-lawsuit-medically-vulnerable-inmates/3076656001/. Amanda Alexander also wrote an op-ed on Imagining a Post-Pandemic Era with Less Policing and No New Jails.

No Kid Hungry/Share Our Strength

Fellow: Bill Shore

Nearly 22 million low-income kids from communities across the US rely on the free and reduced-price meals they receive at school. No Kid Hungry is providing funding to school districts, food banks and local organizations to distribute meals, as well as organizing policy advocacy. https://www.nokidhungry.org/coronavirus

Disaster Accountability Project

Fellow: Ben Smilowitz

Disaster Accountability Project is focused on: 1) Improving aid effectiveness and advancing localization by curating and promoting a global, data-driven “how to help” list of organizations responding to COVID-19. 2) Advocating for solutions to critical gaps, such as PPE and testing shortages and leadership failures. For example, introducing and advocating for an “Emergency Production Act for States” described here: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/497700-congress-must-think-outside-the-box-on-addressing-ppe-and-test

Op-ed: Grocers Must Do More To Limit Foot Traffic in Stores, https://link.medium.com/jPXUFiGcG5

Peace First

Fellow: Eric Dawson

Peace First supports young people 13 – 25 in 140 countries to imagine and create new social innovations to solve community problems. Because their work is digital (a digital design platform where young people can build their programs, collaborate with others, receive mentoring, and potentially receive grants to start-up and scale their solutions) they are preparing for a huge increase in supporting youth who are out of school, worried, and want to do something positive, especially around the secondary effects of the virus – social isolation, xenophobia, mental health issues. Rapid response grants and support are open to young people between the ages of 13-25, anywhere in the world. As of April 4, 2020, over 1,200 youth teams (and counting) from around the globe have raised their hands to lead social innovation to support their communities through the pandemic. More information about their response here and http://www.peacefirst.org

10Power

Fellow: Sandra Kwak

10Power is advocating for and sharing resources on the need for Mutual Aid “The opportunity at this moment is to build resilient social infrastructure through mutual aid to respond effectively to the current Covid-19 crisis and the larger, ongoing crisis of climate change.” https://medium.com/@10Pwr/opportunity-in-the-covid-19-crisis-creating-resilient-global-community-6f73850d0722

Aliento

Fellow: Reyna Montoya

Aliento found their community experiencing new financial, educational, and emotional stressors amid COVID-19. That is why they developed three new projects: a relief fund for undocumented and mixed-status families to mitigate the financial stressors; bilingual resource guides and laptop drives to help students navigate the tech divide and educational stressors; as well as virtual convenings and healing workshops to provide emotional support to their community in times of severe isolation. https://www.alientoaz.org/c19

GirlTrek

Fellows: Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison

GirlTrek, deeply committed to the health and wellbeing of Black women and girls, has altered its programming to better align to the needs of the moment. They have put their walking programs and protests on hold, but are encouraging their members to maintain 30 minutes of self-care per day. They have established a help-line Fellow: 855-GRL-TREK and have established the GirlTrek Gives Back Fund to support members facing extraordinary financial hardship. They have earmarked $100,000 to support trekkers and are planning to provide 3-5 grants per week. Members can apply here: https://girltrek.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6aa11fa786466642f2188db2e&id=d37be43b5f&e=fdadd85448

Thread

Fellow: Sarah Hemminger

Thread staff and volunteers have been addressing the food insecurity of their students’ families in the Baltimore area by buying and delivering groceries to families in need without two weeks of food at home. “These efforts, coupled with the sharing of community resources, have temporarily decreased the fear of food insecurity and allowed people to focus on developing a plan that will help guide them through this uncertain time.” https://mailchi.mp/thread/rsvp-reminder-october-threadtalk-3258189?e=d14e2d7d53

Freedom for Immigrants

Fellows: Christina Mansfield and Christina Fialho

FFI has been tracking on a new COVID-19 section of their map the number and locations of confirmed cases in addition to ICE?s dangerous response to this pandemic (bit.ly/2B7d0Al). FFI owns and operates a safe-house in Louisiana, so they also have been bonding people out of detention and supporting them post-release. Their nationwide documentation has helped them advocate for two bills in Congress and a new budget proposal in California (bit.ly/3c5Zzxg).

PRIME

Fellow: Sarah Kearney

Prime Coalition is a nonprofit public charity that partners with philanthropists to invest capital into market-based solutions to climate change. As a result of COVID-19, Prime Coalition has signed onto a public commitment to adjust existing milestones and extensions.They are also pledging to not pull-back on their investment strategies. https://cleanenergyventures.com/investor-open-letter-coronavirus/

GreenWave

Fellow: Bren Smith

GreenWave supports a new generation of ocean farmers and innovators working to restore ecosystems, mitigate climate change and build a blue-green economy. They do this by providing education, floating classroom job training, and tools to support ocean farmers. They are offering a suite of resources for their farmers and small business owners, including a webinar on financial management during COVID-19, as well as curating a list of references and guides applicable to their participants. “Aquaculture Farm Financial Management During the Pandemic” https://zoom.us/meeting/register/v5YrcOGrqjwoYbdKiwtZndUiXwiN2U5EvA

Pay Our Interns

Fellow: Carlos Mark Vera

Since March, Pay Our Interns’ focus has been on ensuring interns from all backgrounds have the support and money to pay their bills. They first started by conducting a survey so they could better understand what the issues were and how to best help. From there they launched #SaveInternships campaign alongside Symba, a women of color-founded tech company that has an internship software. They have been working with organizations on switching to remote internships, and they also launched a relief fund to give direct cash.

Good Call Limited

Fellows: Jelani Anglin and Gabriel Leader-Rose

With a recent rise in cases of violent arrests and discriminatory policing throughout NYC one thing is clear: access to immediate and reliable legal support is more important than ever. Good Call wants to use this time to launch a digital outreach campaign to make everyone aware of their arrest support service, expand the legal resources they offer by creating an online web tool for COVID-related legal services, and continue their internship program with system-impacted youth virtually.

BOND (Building Our Nation’s Daughters)

Fellow: Ateira Griffin

BOND is a single-mother mentoring program in Baltimore that works to cultivate positive mother-daughter relationships, strengthen single-mother families, and lead advocacy efforts to ensure every single-mother household has equitable access to opportunities. BOND has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing food access to fruits, vegetables, and herbs to promote healthy eating during the quarantine. Additionally, they have created a CAFE session forum for their community to share lessons learned during the quarantine and are hosting live conversations on various topics to support single-mothers during these difficult times such as financial management, teaching methods, and others.

Project Equity

Fellows: Hillary Abell and Alison Lingane

Project Equity builds resilience in low-income communities by developing scalable cooperative businesses, and creating local entrepreneurial ecosystems that increase worker ownership. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Project Equity views this crisis as an opportunity to think creatively about incorporating employee ownership into national and local economic recovery dialogues and agendas so that communities nationwide can rebound and rebuild with greater equity. 

Accountability Counsel

Fellow: Natalie Bridgeman Fields

Accountability Counsel partners with communities harmed by international finance and development projects to hold international institutions and corporations accountable and to develop new accountability systems where none exist. They have witnessed an unprecedented pace and volume of money flowing through international finance systems and recognize the critical need to ensure transparency and accountability of these financial flows to that the money is delivered where it’s needed – and doesn’t undermine the rights of the people the funds are intended to serve. Their team has released a blog post highlighting methods to keep funds grounded in rights-based relationships and are working with government officials, development banks, and the private sector to advance accountability of COVID-19 funds. https://www.accountabilitycounsel.org/2020/04/fast-tracked-covid-19-financing-requires-communities-expertise-to-succeed/?utm_source=AC+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=4c9727a3e1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_06_08_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e9e87d08cb-4c9727a3e1-41552779

Creative Reaction Lab

Fellow: Antionette Carroll

Creative Reaction Lab focuses on educating, training and challenging Black and Latinx youth to become leaders designing healthy and racially equitable communities. As a response to the heightened structural inequities impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Creative Reaction Lab is launching the Youth Creative Leadership Fund Fellow: YCLF to financially assist Black and LatinX youth, their families, and their community members. Up to 20 young individuals will be selected to each receive $100 across three categories: Self-Care + Personal Finances, Creative Expression for Community Support, or Pass it On.

More information here: bit.ly/YCLFopportunity CRXLab also encourages anyone interesting in donating to YCLF to visit https://www.creativereactionlab.com/support-us. 100% of the donated funds will be used to increase its current financial capacity to help more youth during COVID-19.

Video Volunteers

Fellow: Jessica Mayberry 

In India, vast numbers of day laborers, migrants, and others have been further impoverished by the COVID-19 lock down. People have walked across the country by foot in blazing heat only to be put into quarantine centers with no food and water. More than half of Video Voluneers’ 200 correspondents and many staff have been deeply involved in relief, helping more than 91,000 families access rations and interface with the government. Video Volunteers started a new YouTube show Corona GroundStories, dedicated to surfacing the needs and experiences of the poor in this unprecedented crisis. They are starting a community readiness survey in the areas where we work and another program called CHAT (Community Health Action Teams) designed to rally the community for better governance in the area of health. See Jessica explaining VV’s Covid response https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xo3e0DHgM. See the effects of COVID on India’s vast rural population in our YouTube show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60GAnFL6tn3Sjv00VYUfHIc8Ums3ji5v. Read Jessica’s article in News Laundry on how COVID presents an opportunity for citizens to demand greater investment in rural health care. https://www.newslaundry.com/author/jessica-mayberry

Appleseed

Fellow: Philip Kao

Appleseed is offering guidance to social entrepreneurs experiencing challenges communicating with their customers and/or constituents during COVID-19. Appleseed’s core competencies are behavioral change, global development issues, and remote communications, so the team can advise on behavioral marketing as enterprises adapt their strategies in the pandemic. Leaders addressing global development issues in low-income countries may benefit from direction on fostering behavioral change in their audiences.

Ecolectro

Fellow: Kristina Hugar

Ecolectro is drawing upon its team’s unique set of skills and expertise to pivot operations in response to COVID-19. Ecolectro’s mission is to use chemistry to decarbonize the energy, manufacturing and transportation industries. The Ecolectro team of chemists are well-positioned to now manufacture hand sanitizer, following FDA and WHO guidelines. While they began manufacturing for New York state, they have expanded their operations and can now ship to 48 U.S. states. Businesses or individuals interested in obtaining hand sanitizer can inquire here: https://www.ecolectro.com/ecolectro-and-covid-19