Every person, family, and country affected by a crisis deserves attention and support. Yet without media attention, many crises continue to be overlooked and do not receive sufficient support. GlobalGiving launched the Hope in Crisis Fund in 2023 to address inequity in crisis response. Millions of people worldwide continue to endure crises that often go under-covered by mainstream media and unknown to global audiences. With 1 in 5 children globally living in or fleeing from conflict and a record high number of worldwide refugees, supporting locally-led organizations is critical.

The Hope in Crisis Fund was co-designed by eight community leaders in the GlobalGiving network to provide flexible funding to vetted, locally-led organizations within communities grappling with escalating crises and disasters around the world. The co-designers were from the following nonprofits:

Crises addressed through the Fund include armed conflicts, famines, persecution, and climate catastrophes, which are exacerbated by historical injustices such as colonialism and systemic inequities and receive little attention in mainstream media. GlobalGiving seeded the fund with a $500,000 contribution from its own reserves to demonstrate its commitment to ending inequity in disaster response, and hundreds of generous donors have now nearly matched GlobalGiving’s initial contribution.

The first round of the Hope in Crisis Fund grants supported eight community-led partners: four operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and four in Yemen. In total, these partners received a combined $399,000, reaching more than 18,000 people and enabling them to continue their impactful work where communities needed it the most. The next round of Hope in Crisis grants will reach communities in dire need in Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where histories of colonialism and exploitation have intensified violent conflicts and their impact on innocent lives for decades, leaving millions without the ability to meet their families’ basic needs for food, safe housing, and healthcare. Despite the scale of the crises, resources and media attention to Myanmar and Democratic Republic of the Congo fall significantly short.

Support to the Hope in Crisis Fund enables GlobalGiving to continue critical funding to grassroots organizations and disproportionately impacted communities—women, children, Indigenous people, ethnic and racial minorities, and displaced populations—regardless of whether their stories make headlines. If you are interested in making a critical gift to deepen the impact of this vital fund, please contact gifts@globalgiving.org.

To learn more about GlobalGiving’s Hope in Crisis Fund, please visit globalgiving.org/projects/hope-in-crisis-fund/.