Disaster Response Nepal Project #45938

Global Coronavirus Relief

by ActionAid USA

Project Report | Jan 15, 2024
COVID-19 and Food Price Rise Research

By Katherine Coe | Individual Giving Officer

In a world facing an unprecedented cost of living crisis, local communities in the Global South are again bearing the burden of severe price rises for essentials such as food, fuel, and fertilizer.

Even before the invasion of Ukraine, communities across the world were grappling with the far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, a year that tested the resilience of so many, food security surged to alarming levels surpassing the previous five years combined. Then in 2022, the invasion of Ukraine resulted in even sharper rises of food, fuel, and fertilizer prices as the war impacted supplies from both Russia and Ukraine, which are among the world’s top exporters of these products.

Our research released in May 2022 in the report “Doubly Devastating” revealed that local communities were paying double, triple, or even close to four times what they had been paying for food, fuel, and fertilizer before the war began.

Now, ActionAid’s new and more detailed research has found that families are spending up to ten times what they paid almost 16 months ago for food, fuel, and fertilizer. While global prices have dropped by 11.7% since February 2022, our research finds that prices in local communities in the Global South have increased to crisis levels.

Women and girls are disproportionally affected by multiple crises that impact their food intake, education, their right to live free from child marriage, and their mental health and wellbeing.

ActionAid is advocating for a holistic approach to address these intertwining crises; this approach requires the alignment of climate, humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts to provide flexible and multi-year funding that is accessible to women and young people’s organizations, which are best positioned to work with those in greatest need and address the gendered impact of the food crisis. The priority should be to save lives now, which includes addressing the challenges and protection risks faced by women in situations of crisis, while strengthening resilience against further shocks and crises. This resilience-building for the global food crisis must address food sovereignty as well as a transition to alternative energy sources and to just, feminist, and green economic policies.

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Sep 16, 2023
COVID: We're Still Here

By Katherine Coe | Individual Giving Officer

Mirium, a sernior nurse, who is a member of YUW.

Thank you for supporting ActionAid’s global coronavirusresponse. I’m writing to share some updates on our work.

Though we are three years out from the start of this pandemic, we continue to double down on important relief efforts. COVID-19 has created a complex and debilitating global public health crisis, exacerbating existing inequalities and creating worsening conditions for marginalized communities around the world.

For decades, ActionAid and our partners have worked to address the root causes of humanitarian crises and emergencies like this, centering women and girls at the forefront of our efforts, and calling for increased resource mobilization to mount appropriate responses.

One of these efforts is supporitng the Young Urban Women (YUW) and The Nurses Association of Malawi (NAM) in Malawi, Africa. ActionAid Malawi work with The Nurses Association of Malawi (NAM) through advocacy work. The Malawi government, as instructed by the International Monetary Fund, were told to freeze employment of nurses, doctors and teachers. ActionAid are working with NAM to amplify the voices of nurses, doctors and teachers to advocate for change.

ActionAid Malawi are forming a Young Urban Women’s (YUW) group for the nurses to allow for deeper conversations on how the coercive advice given by the IMF affects both unemployed and employed nurses, and how these can be challenged. A helathy, robust, diverse, and resilient healthcare workforce is critical to protecting Malawi's rural communities from future external shocks from the COVID-19 virus.

Plus- ActionAid's Young Urban Women’s (YUW) Programme addresses young women’s economic rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Using a human rights based approach to development, the project places a commitment to building the active agency of young women living in poverty at its centre. This lays the foundation for addressing young women’s access to decent work and sexual and reproductive services simultaneously in three key ways: empowerment, campaigning and solidarity.

This is just one of the ways you have helped make an impact. As this pandemic, and our response, continue to evolve, we want to thank you for continuing to support our work around the world.

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May 22, 2023
COVID-19: Three Years On

By Katherine Coe | Individual Giving Officer

Thank you for supporting ActionAid’s global coronavirus response. I’m writing to share some updates on our work.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, together with community-based human rights defenders, social organisations, supporters, hospitals and the local administrations, ActionAid has been on the ground and responding. Even though it may seem like the pandemic is over in some parts of the world, it has exacerbated existing inequalities and created worsening conditions for marginalized communities around the world.

With your support, ActionAid and our partners are working to address the root causes of humanitarian crises and emergencies like the COVID pandemic. As you know, our humanitarian signature centers women and girls at the forefront of our response, as we demand increased resource mobilization to mount appropriate responses.

One of these responses includes our work in India. Your support has allowed ActionAid to implement a year long program that was run across 181 villages in India which increased COVID-19 vaccination access for marginalized communities. Our community-based volunteers began by identifying non-vaccinated and partially vaccinated people from vulnerable groups, including tribal communities, minorities, persons with disabilities, and elders. Then, through door-to-door campaigns, volunteers spread awareness about the need for vaccination and urged everyone to get their shot. Through village-level vaccination camps and mega vaccination drives organized with local government hospitals and health centers, we facilitated almost 200,000 vaccinations against COVID-19, for people who otherwise would not have had access to the vaccinations.

This is just one example of the many ways you have helped make an impact. As this pandemic, and our response, continue to evolve, we want to thank you for continuing to support our work around the world.

We encourage you to look at some of our other programs and policy work that try to address and right the systems of injustice and poverty, by visiting our website: www.actionaidusa.org.

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