Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund

Thank you for your generous donation to the Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund. Your generosity is providing access to life-saving services for Rohingya refugees at a time when communities are confronting serious risks, including devastating fires, reduced food assistance, and difficult journeys across seas. 

Most recently, GlobalGiving made four grants to high-impact and community-led nonprofit organizations at the forefront of this crisis. 

Here is a short description of some of the critical work you’ve supported:

• HOPE Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh is providing critical healthcare services through its field hospital and maternity clinics in Bangladeshi camps. One of its clinics burned down in the fire in early March. Despite this, the organization’s emergency response team responded immediately to help hundreds of Rohingya men, women, and children.

• Yayasan Dompet Dhuafa Republika is a partner in Indonesia where Rohingya refugees continue to arrive by boat in dangerous conditions. The foundation is providing food packages to refugees and offers access to healthcare services and hygiene kits.

• OBAT Helpers is working with partners to provide a range of services to Rohingya refugees on mainland Bangladesh and Bhasan Char island. These services include learning centers, livelihood projects, health programs, and food programs during the upcoming month of Ramadan.

• Disable Development & Educational Foundation (DDEF) is a Bangladeshi partner supporting Rohingya refugees with disabilities in Bangladesh. The organization prioritizes economic opportunities for these communities.

Your support of the Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund powers community-led responses. It means partners like the HOPE Foundation get the critical resources they need to help rebuild after the recent devastating fire in Cox’s Bazar. Without durable solutions to this displacement crisis, your support will continue to be critical. We will continue to make grants from this fund; please consider continuing your support.

With gratitude, 

Sarah Rahman + The GlobalGiving Team

Nonprofit Partners Receiving Grants

• Disable Development & Educational Foundation (DDEF)
• Hope Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh 
• OBAT Helpers Inc
• Yayasan Dompet Dhuafa Republika

In 2017, more than 730,000 Rohingya in Myanmar were uprooted from their homes as they fled violence and persecution at a scale the United Nations described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and the United States considered “genocide and crimes against humanity.” Five years later, nearly 1 million Rohingya are still displaced, mostly hosted by Bangladesh in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp. More than half of those refugees are children, and many have only known life in a camp.

GlobalGiving launched the Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund in September 2017 to respond to the unimaginable needs resulting from this forced exodus. The crisis has caused enormous hardship for the Rohingya who fled their homes and strained the host communities in Bangladesh, but our partners have been responding ever since. 

Thanks to the generous outpouring of support of GlobalGiving community members, including you, donations continue to make a difference by ensuring Rohingya refugees across the region receive vital services even five years after they were forcibly displaced. As our longstanding partner HOPE Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh recently said, “It is amazing to see what has been possible in the midst of chaos.”

Since launching the fund, GlobalGiving has supported nine vetted nonprofit partners with grants totaling $455,000. 

This July, GlobalGiving made two additional grants to our trusted nonprofit partners working with the most impacted of these refugee communities. Here is a short description of some of the critical work you’ve supported: 

• Friendship has bolstered its health care services to include five 24/7 primary health care centers, servicing approximately 150,000 Rohingya. The organization also operates a hospital in Ukhiya, Bangladesh, which offers critical OBGYN services to women. Friendship provides extracurricular activities for children to promote social development and complement education as well. 

• The Malaysian Relief Agency Foundation serves Rohingya refugees across Malaysia through child and adult education programming and basic health care services. While most funding is driven toward Rohingya communities in the densely populated Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char camps in Bangladesh, the Malaysian Relief Agency Foundation works to ensure Rohingya in other host countries like Malaysia can also access essential resources.

Your support of the Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund powers these community-led responses, and it means Rohingya refugees get the critical resources they need as the situation continues without a sustainable solution for the families and individuals who are still displaced. Thank you again for your generosity.

With gratitude, 

Kyra + the GlobalGiving Team

Thank you for your generous gift to the Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund. Donations like yours continue to make a difference by helping to ensure Rohingya refugees receive medical care, food, psychosocial support, and protection from COVID-19 during the most challenging times. 

And for many Rohingya refugees, the past year was truly unimaginable. Between March 2021 and January 2022, two fires struck Cox’s Bazar. The fires killed at least 15 people and burned more than 11,000 refugees’ shelters along with COVID-19 treatment facilities. As media attention shifts among simultaneous crises across the world, the needs of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh can go unheard and unmet. That makes your donation all the more meaningful.

We recently made two additional grants to our trusted nonprofit partners working at the forefront of this crisis. Here is a short description of some of the critical work you’ve supported: 

• HOPE Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh has expanded its health care services across the Kutupalong refugee camp and scaled up its youth sports initiative. It is also administering COVID-19 vaccinations to help protect refugees as the pandemic continues.
• OBAT Helpers is serving Rohingya refugees across the Kutupalong camp network through food distribution, education programming for children, and basic healthcare services. Your donation also enabled the organization to dedicate efforts to refugees relocated to Bhasan Char, an island off the coast of Bangladesh.

Your support of the Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund powers these community-led responses, and it means Rohingya refugees get the critical resources they need. Thank you again for your generosity.

With gratitude, 

Kyra + the GlobalGiving Team

As COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh surpass 1 million, the government is jumpstarting its vaccine rollout. Around 3% of the population has been fully vaccinated. So far, that doesn’t include the Rohingya.

The Rohingya people in Bangladesh are coping with the pandemic and other disasters in their community nearly four years after more than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee their homes and lives in Myanmar. They are still awaiting the time when they can safely return home. 

Thank you for supporting them through the Rohingya Refugee Relief Fund. Here’s a snapshot of how your donation is assisting Rohingya families and individuals living in refugee camps:

Curbing COVID-19 with care

Gonoshasthaya Kendra’s health facilities are serving Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, and they haven’t closed for a single day—not even when the pandemic stretched their staff and resources thin. 

The Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh include the largest and most densely populated camps in the world. Social distancing and accessing water is difficult there, making measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 even more critical.

Gonoshasthaya Kendra, which has been working with Rohingya refugees since 1992, distributed PPE early in the pandemic and continues to provide medical support at local health facilities. As one of the largest health providers in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, the nonprofit has, to date, cared for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya. 

Offering relief where and when it’s needed

Hope Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh is responding to emergencies affecting Rohingya refugees with mobile medical teams. 

Hope Foundation provides masks, soap, and other essentials for women and children, who make up the majority of the Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar. And when a fire swept through the district earlier this year, killing 11 people and displacing more than 45,000 as it destroyed swaths of the refugee camps, the nonprofit’s mobile medical teams responded with emergency assistance and relief supplies for survivors.

As the Rohingya population continues to face uncertainty and strives to stay safe and healthy during the pandemic, your contribution is fueling the local organizations that support them with emergency relief and ongoing care. Thank you for your generosity. We look forward to sharing more stories of how your donation is making a difference for the Rohingya.

With gratitude, 

Merinda + the GlobalGiving Team

After spending more than three years in refugee camps far from home, the Rohingya people will likely need to wait even longer to return to Myanmar after the recent military coup. Nurual Amin, a Rohingya refugee living in Bangladesh, told the Associated Press, “Even if they try to repatriate us, we will not agree to go back under the current situation.” Thankfully, GlobalGiving’s partners in Bangladesh can continue supporting the Rohingya people thanks to generous donors like you. 

Preventing the spread of COVID-19:

• In Bangladesh, the HOPE Foundation for Women & Children of Bangladesh has given pregnant women, newborns, and fistula survivors—some of the most high-risk groups for COVID-19— plenty of masks, water purification tablets, and soap.
• With the rise in COVID-19 cases, Friends of UNFPA quickly realized that many women living in the refugee camps were giving birth without doctors or the proper tools. They began a community transport system which brings women in labor to UNFPA health facilities so they can receive the treatment they need, without worrying about the coronavirus.  

Prioritizing refugees’ needs:

• The  JAAGO Foundation is training teachers on how to keep students engaged with virtual learning to help students succeed as they dive into online education amid school closures.
• OBAT Helpers is supporting students through caregivers as schools remain closed due to the pandemic. The childrens’ caregivers engage them in daily educational activities at home to keep them learning, even while they are out of school. OBAT also trained more than 600 caregivers on identifying and managing the symptoms of COVID-19! 

With the instability of the past month in Myanmar and the ongoing COVID-19 crisis taking a toll on the Rohingya people, your support is so appreciated. 

Thank you.

With gratitude, 

Shannon + the GlobalGiving team