Our COVID-19 fund has reached the frontlines.
14 organisations have received grants, and we are working to fund another 32 in response to applications from India, Albania and Nepal. In almost every instance, our network has requested funding not for sanitiser, masks or medicine, but for food. In response to government lockdowns, businesses have closed and jobs have disappeared. Migrant workers are exposed like never before, with nowhere to go. “We will die of starvation before the virus gets us” was the chant in Delhi this week.
Thank you to everyone who has supported this critical appeal. If you can, please do help us to reach more people. This is the most powerful anti-trafficking and anti-slavery work we could be doing in this moment, and we are relying on your help.
A food bank established at the gates of the Bethany Convent compound distributes essential supplies to abandoned brick kiln workers – West Bengal, India.
Staff of Seva Kindra, who focus on the empowerment of tea garden workers, draw up lists of households to which they will be delivering basic food and soap in the coming weeks – Assam, India.
In Albania, organisations adapt to the lockdown in relation to the communities they support: Shkej, working to empower and educate the children of the Roma community; Nisma, providing shelter and outreach, especially to the waste workers of the Roma communities; and Different and Equal, running shelters and reintegration programs for trafficked women.
Five organisations in Arise’s network that support exploited migrant groups establish urgent food provision services – Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, India.
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