The Resource Foundation's Response to COVID-19
As when any disaster or humanitarian crisis hits, the TRF team has been working in overdrive to support COVID-19 response and mitigation efforts across Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Given the extreme nature of the pandemic, we are working in waves to get in touch with our extensive network of local nonprofit and social enterprise partners throughout 29 countries to better understand what COVID-19 means for them and their organizations, and if they are doing anything to specifically address gaps in community response efforts. With this insight, we are then able to communicate specific needs back to our US-based donor clients who are looking for ways to offer support. Opportunities in the past months have included employee match portals through TRF and funding for response-specific activities, as well as ongoing flexible operational support. We leverage our local network and experience to create a framework for companies, foundations, and individuals to quickly respond in meaningful and impactful ways.
Given the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the interrelated nature of the challenges associated with it, we are seeing an incredible range of needs at both the local and regional levels - from food security and PPE to mental health, education, and healthcare. To date, we have received project proposals from 65 TRF network partners across 17 countries.
We established our own COVID Response Fund to support TRF´s work, offering ongoing support and making vital connections so that funding reaches communities and locally-based organizations that need it most.
- $1,365,000 confirmed; additional funding is currently being negotiated/assigned with added opportunities likely (in the pipeline) for the coming weeks and months as the pandemic continues to unfold in Latin America.
- Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Bahamas, Colombia, Peru, and Canada (with Dominica and Ecuador also likely given our current pipeline).
