GlobalGiving Forward Fund

The GlobalGiving community was challenged like never before in 2022. We saw war, famine, floods, and financial and political strife put pressure on people around the globe.

But we also saw our community show up like never before. Thank you. 

Two weeks before Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine, our partners’ requests for support prompted us to launch the GlobalGiving Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund. Within eight days of the Feb. 24 invasion, we sent the first emergency grants to nonprofit organizations whose home cities became the front lines of the conflict.

From Kyiv to Kherson, these organizations stood by their communities. And from Albania to Zambia, nearly 200,000 people like you rallied and gave more than $66.7 million to support them.

But the needs presented by war and other calamities persisted—and they extended far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

In the Horn of Africa, more than 20 million people faced the worst famine conditions in decades. HODI brought resources to people who were suffering from the drought and struggling to get ample supplies of food and water for their households.

In Pakistan, with one-third of the country submerged in floodwaters, Al-Mustafa Welfare Society fed and assisted families who lost homes, crops, livestock—nearly everything—in the floods.

And when hurricanes threatened entire islands and knocked out power grids, the leaders in their communities were there to relieve, rebuild, and restore.

For Ariadna Godreau, director of our longtime partner Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona was a lecture on the status of the recovery from Hurricane Maria in 2017.

The impacts, especially on low-income, Black communities and single moms still waiting on 2017-era assistance, underscored the need for equitable access to recovery funds, housing, and policies to ensure climate justice.

“Despite the enormous challenges and the hills we have to climb, I feel hopeful that we’re starting to make real changes and can make more as we continue to work together,” Ariadna told us.

As the climate crisis makes compounding disasters the new reality, the community partners in our network keep working to prepare and respond. They have the courage, knowledge, and commitment. Our role is to trust in their expertise—and invest in it.

That’s the foundation of our mission: to fuel community-led change. And in 2022, we pursued more opportunities to share power, co-create solutions, and live up to all of our community-led commitments. None of our urgent work would be possible without your unwavering support.

Learn more about how you helped fuel community-led change in a reflection on 2022 and a preview of our collective impact yet to come.

With gratitude for your partnership,

Donna Callejon
Executive Advisor + 2022 Interim GlobalGiving CEO

Victoria Vrana
GlobalGiving CEO

Links:

• Read GlobalGiving's 2022 Annual Report

Thank you for your generous donation to the GlobalGiving Forward Fund. Donations to this fund are making a difference, helping to ensure communities around the world are in the driver's seat of change.

As we celebrate GlobalGiving’s 20th anniversary and the power of community-led change this year, we want to shine the spotlight again on three community-led nonprofits and introduce the leaders behind them. Their stories, first shared at GlobalGiving’s virtual anniversary event in March, are now available to view as part of our “Community Foward Film Series.” 

Here is a short description of some of their critical work: 

• Hope Foundation for African Women is working to end the life-threatening practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Kenya, starting from within the communities where it happens. The organization’s founder, Grace B. Mose Okong’o, endured FGM as a girl, and the painful experience haunted her. Grace’s work with Hope Foundation for African Women is inspired by her belief that FGM survivors and perpetrators, sometimes one and the same, hold the key to ending FGM and breaking gender barriers once and for all.
  
  
• La Maraña is making space for Puerto Ricans to envision and execute solutions that rebuild and improve their island. La Maraña’s Executive Director, Carlo André Oliveras Rodriguez, witnessed firsthand the devastation in Puerto Rico after hurricanes Irma and Maria—and the painfully slow government response that left lights out in some communities for months. Carlo believes Puerto Ricans themselves know best how to create safer futures, but they’re shut out through broken systems.
  
  
• Seeding Sovereignty is a multi-lens collective that works to radicalize and disrupt colonized spaces through land, body, and food sovereignty work, community building, and cultural preservation. Their Co-Executive Director, S.A. Lawrence-Welch, is bringing Indigenous and marginalized people together in healing ways and spaces through Seeding Sovereignty. The legacy of ethnic persecution and trauma that S.A. and their family faced, including residential boarding schools and the Sixties Scoop Era, fuels their determination to lead by example and bring support, validation, and joy to others in their journey through the healing process in a colonized world.

Watch and share our #CommunityForward film series to learn more and help us spread the word about the power of community-led change.

Your support of the GlobalGiving Forward Fund powers community-led responses, and it means people like Grace, Carlo, and S.A. get the critical resources they need to help their community move forward and build a better future. 

With gratitude,

Donna Callejon
Interim GlobalGiving CEO