DEC Coronavirus Appeal reaches £30m in funds raised
Melanie May | 12 November 2020 | News
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Coronavirus Appeal has raised £30 million in the four months since its launch on 14 July.
This total includes a donation from J.K. Rowling’s charitable trust, The Volant Charitable Trust, funded by proceeds from the author’s new children’s book, The Ickabog, published this week.
DEC Chief Executive Saleh Saeed said:
“The UK public has demonstrated huge generosity at an extremely difficult time, helping people around the world facing the pandemic without the safety net of the NHS. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported the DEC Coronavirus Appeal so far.
“The Volant Charitable Trust has helped push our appeal over the £30 million milestone, allowing our member charities to reach even more people with life-saving assistance. But the pandemic has triggered an unprecedented crisis in the world’s most fragile places and there is much more to do to protect people from Covid-19 and its secondary effects, such as hunger which is already killing children in Yemen and may soon be in Syria.”
Funds donated to the DEC Coronavirus Appeal will help the most vulnerable people in six of the world’s most fragile states: Yemen and Syria; Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Afghanistan. A total of 24 million displaced people live in crowded camps and settlements in these countries. The appeal also includes the world’s largest refugee camp – in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where more than 850,000 Rohingya refugees have sought sanctuary.
In the first six months of the humanitarian response, DEC funds are primarily being spent on water, sanitation and hygiene activities (31%), such as providing clean water, handwashing stations and hygiene kits, with a secondary focus on health projects (23%), including isolation and treatment centres, supporting fragile health systems and providing PPE to frontline medics. Other priorities include providing food (11%) and supporting livelihoods (11%).
The appeal will remain open until Spring 2021.
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.