| Humanitarian actions can save lives ▸ |
Here in this extraordinary week you likely have started to feel the impacts of COVID‑19 (the coronavirus) in your own community. You might be changing your routines and taking extra care to stay safe, for yourself and your loved ones. As COVID‑19 continues to spread around the world, we know it is now reaching countries most vulnerable to the health and economic impacts of the virus. Around the world, people fleeing conflict, living in poverty or without access to healthcare face the greatest risk from this pandemic. As borders are closing, it’s becoming harder for international aid to reach people who most need humanitarian assistance. We’re preparing for the potential impact of COVID‑19 in the communities we support, and working to ensure ongoing delivery of our life-saving programs to more than 28 million people around the world. Your support in this moment can help save lives and support communities facing devastating challenges like disease, conflict and natural disaster. Your emergency gift to our Humanitarian Response Fund helps families and our global community prepare for and be more resilient in moments of crisis, including the ones they are facing today. Mercy Corps teams are already on the ground where help is most needed. We work in more than 40 countries to help people and communities prepare for, protect against and recover from crisis. We have teams in more than 16 countries where COVID‑19 has been confirmed, including Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in the Pacific Northwest states of the U.S. In so many of the countries where we work, the risk of rapidly spreading disease is not new. Mercy Corps teams have provided essential support to communities in Liberia and DR Congo during outbreaks of Ebola virus. As we respond to disasters in places like Zimbabwe or Puerto Rico, or help refugees and internally displaced families in Syria, Colombia, Nigeria and around the world, we provide lifesaving resources to battle the threats of cholera and other water-borne disease. 
Webster, a Mercy Corps team member, holds a bar of soap as he instructs community members about handwashing and the threat of cholera in Zimbabwe following Cyclone Idai. Mercy Corps distributed jerrycans, water purification tablets, water storage buckets and soap to families taking shelter in a church after their homes were destroyed.
What is Mercy Corps doing? Mercy Corps is already working to help communities protect themselves against the spread of infectious disease by providing information and resources for safe handwashing. Our local teams know how critically important it is for communities to have access to clean, safe water and reliable information about hygiene and sanitation. We also are preparing to draw on our experience of helping small businesses and communities survive and recover from the economic impact of this crisis. Small business owners are the most vulnerable to the economic disruptions of any emergency, and as communities around the world take precautions of social distancing and self-isolation to protect against COVID‑19, the economic impacts are being felt both near and far. What can I do to help? With news reports updating the impact of COVID‑19 around the globe, many of us are considering how we can best help. As humanitarians you can help the wider global community and the most vulnerable people in it, even as you prepare and make changes here at home. Please make a gift to Mercy Corps Humanitarian Response Fund today, to ensure that Mercy Corps can reach families around the world quickly and efficiently with urgently needed support during this crisis and all year round. In this global crisis, we must all help each other, and we must protect the most vulnerable among us. Thank you for your generous support. 
Adrienne Karecki, Mercy Corps Chief Development and Marketing Officer |
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