The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the injustices of our world. It also reminds us of that we are all interconnected—and that our health and well-being are dependent on how we treat each other.
Here are some of the many ways communities worldwide are responding to rising need, with the support of caring people like you.
Protecting tenant rights in Atlanta
AFSC’s Home Defenders program supports community members to organize tenant associations, demand fair treatment from landlords, and stay in their homes.
Take action
Protect people in prisons, jails, and detention centers from COVID-19!
Forced proximity to others and a lack of access to adequate health care in these facilities are particularly dangerous during a pandemic.
How to create a mutual aid network
Here are some resources for creating meaningful projects to care for your neighbors while maintaining physical distance.
Get our poster
Download and share this image with your community to promote shared well-being. Artwork by Shirien Damra
More resources
Helping communities in Zimbabwe stay healthy during COVID-19
Thanks to your support, we’re continuing to provide personal protective equipment, hygiene supplies, and other critical items to communities where resources are scarce in this pandemic.
Supporting youth organizers in Chicago during COVID-19
AFSC is providing youth with groceries, personal protective equipment, and other necessities—while supporting their mutual aid efforts and ongoing work to stop militarism, policing, and surveillance in their communities.
Providing support to communities in Guatemala during COVID-19
Thanks to your support of AFSC’s pandemic response efforts, dozens of community members have received food assistance and hygiene supplies.
AFSC's Farm to Food Bank program grows in New Mexico
Since early March, supporters like you have helped us provide fresh produce to thousands of community members—while supporting local, small-scale farms.
Supporting immigrant communities in Oregon
AFSC's Pedro Sosa discusses how support for communtiies affected by wildfires as they continue to struggle with the impacts of COVID-19 and immigration enforcement.
Helping people in Somalia protect themselves from COVID-19
Thanks to your support, AFSC and local partners are providing hygiene supplies, protective equipment, and vital information to people in refugee camps and other communities.
Responding to COVID and working for racial justice in New Orleans
As the pandemic highlights race and class disparities in health care, your support has helped AFSC’s Peace by Piece Program work with community members to improve fresh food access and create safer, healthier neighborhoods.
Providing aid to communities in El Salvador
Thanks to your support of AFSC’s pandemic response efforts, dozens of community members struggling in this pandemic have received food assistance and hygiene supplies.
Bringing COVID testing to migrant farmworkers in Florida
As cases continue to rise at alarming rates, AFSC is working to ensure agricultural communities have access to testing, personal protective equipment, and other resources.
Safeguarding partners in Indonesia during COVID
Thanks to your support, local partners are distributing food, medical and hygiene supplies, and other items to their staff, volunteers, and community members.
Millions of immigrants are being left out of coronavirus relief
The next COVID-19 relief package must provide health care and other benefits for DACA recipients, TPS holders, farm workers, and all immigrants.
Stories from elders in Gaza
Hear from some of the seniors in Gaza who have received face masks and other essential virus protection items as part of our pandemic relief response.
Helping immigrants left out of coronavirus relief
With your support, AFSC is helping to provide financial assistance to immigrants in San Diego and communities around the U.S. while advocating alongside them to end detention and deportation.
The call to #FreeOurYouth during COVID-19
In Chicago, community members are demanding the release of Incarcerated youth—and real investments in their health and future.
Helping Kenyans protect themselves from COVID-19
Thanks to supporters like you, AFSC and local partners are providing food, personal protective equipment, hygiene supplies, and information to community members in the Mathare settlement in Nairobi.
Providing PPE to health care workers in Zimbawbe
Thanks to supporters like you, we can ensure the availability of locally produced medical masks, gloves, coveralls, and other PPE at Gweru Infectious Diseases Hospital—in Zimbabwe third-largest city—and other COVID-19 designated hospitals for at least the next three months.
Helping people keep their homes in Atlanta
Here’s how community members in Georgia are working to prevent evictions and protect tenants and homeowners during the pandemic and beyond.
Emergency response update: Migrants in Latin America
How the AFSC community is making a difference for those fleeing violence and poverty.
West Virginia shores up its safety net in response to COVID-19
With support from AFSC, community members have created a rapid response network to feed children and seniors and advocated for increased access to critical government programs.
Why we support the call to #FreeThemAll
No one is served by keeping millions locked up behind bars—not during a pandemic, not ever.
As U.N. officials speak out, the call grows to free Palestinian children from detention during pandemic
Our advocacy for Palestinian human rights are more important than ever. Here’s what you can do today.
COVID-19 is spreading in U.S. prisons—I’m worried my father might be affected
Government officials must work to protect incarcerated people during this pandemic, writes Kharon Benson.
Are governments violating human rights and civil liberties in responding to coronavirus?
Historically crises have been exploited to introduce dangerous policies—right now may be one of these moments, says AFSC's Sahar Vardi.
Protecting immigrants from COVID-19
No one should ever have to experience life in an immigration detention center—but especially during this pandemic, when forced proximity and a lack of access to medical care are even more dangerous.
Why have ventilators when you can have warplanes?
Even during a pandemic, Congress continues to prioritize weapons of war over public health.
Support our work
Help communities impacted by COVID-19
Give today to support human rights and dignity at this time of great need.
More ways to help
End the blockade on Gaza
Stand up to anti-Asian racism
In the news
- I'm an immigration attorney ill with COVID-19. But it's my detained clients' lives I fear for the most (Newsweek)
- AFSC and partners file class-action lawsuit demanding the release of all immigrants from for-profit detention center (Gothamist)
- If the state fails to act, prisons will become death camps (Star-Ledger)
- Leaders must act to protect refugees and internally displaced people in Africa (Common Dreams)
- West Virginia governor pledges to test all people in state prison system (WV Metro News)
- More than 70% of inmates at one prison had COVID-19, and advocates fear the coronavirus is silently spreading (BuzzFeed)
- COVID-19 kills immigrant in California migrant detention center (KRON4)
- Speaking out against Trump's executive order suspending immigration (The Nation)
- 'Mass evictions' on the horizon as US confronts coronavirus housing crisis (ABC News)
- 70+ groups demand Trump immediately end sanctions against Iran, North Korea, and others during COVID-19 crisis (Common Dreams)
- Gov. Whitmer must do more to safeguard people, workers in prisons (Detroit Free Press)
- Quaker group connects New Mexico organic farms with food banks during COVID outbreak (NPR)
- Farmworkers risk coronavirus infection to keep the U.S. fed (National Geographic)
- AFSC and allies defend employee health in Iowa meatpacking plants (Des Moines Register)
- Immigration officials vow not to raid hospitals as coronavirus spreads (Miami Herald)
- Prisons and jails change policies to address coronavirus threat behind bars (NPR)
- Arizona prison insiders fear COVID-19 outbreak (ABC15):
- Coronavirus is changing life for Michigan prisons. Here’s how (Detroit Free Press)
- Coronavirus scare hampers humanitarian work in North Korea (Voice of America)
- Washington hawks are softening their hard line on sanctions against North Korea (The Nation)
- Israel’s caging of Gaza is a recipe for coronavirus disaster (+972):
- The impact of the coronavirus in Africa: An interview with Pauline Muchina (CGTN):
- What's spreading faster than coronavirus in the US? Racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians (CNN)
