In addition to our core focus areas, we recognise many vulnerable communities all over the world might require urgent support that falls out of our key programme areas. We believe in helping where we can by offering one-off grants. These are made on a discretionary basis and generally take the form of a one-off, unrestricted donation in response to a national or international emergency.
In 2022 Choose Love launched its Ukraine Emergency Appeal and focused their efforts on developing a network of local
responders delivering humanitarian relief and essential services to conflict-affected people across Ukraine and the refugee-receiving countries. They deliver support through an established ecosystem of grassroots and civil society groups across Europe and have ensured that funds reach the ground quickly, assisting actors filling critical gaps in services from evacuations, medical care and hot food to legal advice and LGBTQI+ rights and support.
(C) AJEH - Community outreach work under Covid-19 restrictions. In March 2019, India, like much of the world, went into a national lockdown in response to the covid-19 pandemic. We responded to support the national relief effort in India with a donation of PPE Kits to hospitals, emergency food hampers for patients and their families and daily meals for migrant workers in Delhi in partnership with The National Restaurant Association of India , Kabir Suri and The Sadh Samaj Charitable Trust. Children and families from a previous partner of ours; Project Why, also benefitted from these free meals. In the UK, we supported our partners with agile and flexible funding and reporting and in addition granted a donation to ZLS towards their ‘People & Wildlife’ programme via a Covid emergency fundraising campaign.
According to 2019 data from the Brazilian National Institute of Space Programs (INPE), 7.2 million hectare of rainforest burned in the Brazilian Amazon. In response to this crisis throughout the summer of 2019, we donated an emergency grant to fund organisations and communities working on the frontline in Brazil. These grants were directed to Amazon Watch, The Boa Foundation and The Rainforest Alliance - each working to protect the rainforest and advance the right of indigenous people in the Amazon Basin.
Our support for indigenous communities and the Amazon Rainforest very much came from a sense that we urgently needed to ‘do something’ but we wanted the impact to be two-fold so that the grants offered longer- term impact as well as immediate relief. We are hopeful in years to come we will begin to see the positive ripple effect of our emergency fundraising appeal–and in the meantime, will continue to be encouraged by the convening power of like-minded individuals to act fast and make a difference when needed most.
Devika Waney Mokhtarzadeh, Trustee
