Friday, May 8, 2020

COVID & Global #Giving Tuesday! FEEEDS Steps Up



In support of the world-wide focus to help organizations that help our fellow man/woman doing the best of times, but even more so doing the worst of times, like the COVID-19 Pandemic, the FEEEDS Advocacy Initiative sought to do its part on global  #Giving Tuesday, with contributions to:


COVID Solidarity Defense Fund - which helps people world-wide during the pandemic through the World Health Organization https://covid19responsefund.org/


Frontline Foods by World Central Kitchen - given that many frontline works themselves are facing food insecurity or need food support during their incredible, long, and difficult work, which is helping us all  -- be it in a hospital, as fire fighters, or bus drivers, etc. -- and their families, we focused this donation on one of the ER/ICU units at Harlem Hospital in New York City. Frontline Foods is part of the ongoing, wonderful efforts of World Central Kitchen, which I like to think of as a leading food activism effort headed by famed chef, restaurateur, and humanitarian Jose Andres https://wck.org
Feeding America - Food insecurity was a global problem in general in the world with nearly 820 million people who faced daily hunger prior to COVID, ever being a blip on the screen. Now with COVID-19, food insecurity and hunger are raging, on top of the already existing pre-COVID hungry. Estimates are, as data from most organizations is still be complied, that the pandemic has added another 265 million people on top of the pre-COVID 820 million. In the U.S. and around the world, there have been record numbers of people having to rely on local food banks to survive given the additional shrinkage in the economy and further job loss. May 2020 estimates are that more than 195 million jobs are possibly impacted (90 percent of those, mostly in the informal sector, which may not come back), and developed nations such as the U.S. now have more than 17 million Americans already out of work. In Africa and other developing world countries, refuge camps, and among migrant workers, the numbers are even more stark, and the crisis even greater giving conditions in some areas, lack of resources, and a large number of informal/daily workers without (or with less) places to turn for assistance. https://www.feedingamerica.org
Morgan State University Foundation - its COVID Emergency Fund for Student Assistance, provides assistance to students at Morgan State, one of America's leading Historically Black College Universities, with food and shelter, particularly those who have no other place to go, are food insecure, or are international students, who given the travel ban environment, are not able to return to their home countries at this time. https://givetomorgan.org/
A FEEEDS Series Blogspot