April 15, 2020
Clara Lionel Foundation, JAY-Z’s Shawn Carter Foundation (SCF), and Twitter & Square CEO Jack Dorsey released $6.2 million in grants for COVID-19 rapid response efforts in the U.S and abroad. The grants, distributed across eleven organizations, will support efforts that include providing shelter, food and healthcare services to homeless youth in New Orleans, to building virus testing capacity across the Caribbean and to the set-up of ICUs, hospital beds and isolation units in sub-Saharan Africa, among others.
In the United States and Puerto Rico, funds will specifically go towards:
• Give Directly in support of cash transfers to low income families in the mainland US as well as in Puerto Rico.
• Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City to support the Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV) to support domestic violence survivors who need a capital injection to ensure their safety and stability during COVID-19. Micro grants will allow the financing of immediate needs of food, clothing, temporary housing, and more.
• Covenant House New Orleans to support shelter, food, clothing, counseling, and medicine for homeless, at-risk and trafficked youth, many of whom are jobless at the moment. Funds will support six months of shelter, food, medical attention and supplies for homeless youth.
• World Central Kitchen (WCK) to support meals for homeless and senior populations in New Orleans. Funds will support the activation of local restaurants and workers.
• Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans & Acadiana, the Feeding America network member that serves the city. Funds will support food sourcing and storage, non-touch distribution and delivery services, and supplemental staff due to a decrease in volunteers.
• Total Community Action, in partnership with the New Orleans Mayor’s Office of Community and Economic Development, to support rental assistance for economically vulnerable Orleans Parish residents impacted by the pandemic. Funds will match the current government funding to grant up to $750 in rental assistance per household.
• The Hispanic Federation to support health clinics in Puerto Rico. Funds will go towards triage shelters, supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for a network of over 20 clinics across Puerto Rico.
Internationally, grants will go towards:
• Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to support COVID-19 response efforts in the hardest to reach and most vulnerable areas of the world. Funds will go towards COVID-19 case management, training, set-up of ICU and hospital beds and isolation units, and development of response guidelines and best practices.
• The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to support the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA) Community-Based HIV Testing Services to work with mobile clinics to manage the anticipated spread of COVID-19 in the Mulanje and Phalombe districts of Malawi.
• Direct Relief to support purchasing of testing cartridges to build COVID-19 testing capacity Saint Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica,St. Kitts and Nevis, and Antigua and Barbuda. This grant will also support medicine kits needed in hospital ICUs to over five additional locations throughout the Caribbean.
• Team Humanity to support sanitization efforts in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos.
In response to these relief efforts, the UBS Optimus Foundation announced that it would generously match one hundred percent of CLF’s $1 million grant to Médecins Sans Frontières with an additional $1 million.
This latest joint effort follows multiple additional rounds of COVID-19 response grants, including a co-funded $4.2 million round by CLF and Jack Dorsey and a $2 million matching grant commitment by CLF and the Shawn Carter Foundation. Earlier in March, CLF announced $5 million to on-the-ground partners working to protect and prepare vulnerable and marginalized communities in the United States, Caribbean and in Africa.
