Street Child’s COVID-19 Emergency Appeal

The charity Street Child first came on my radar in 2014 through the Guardian journalist Lisa O’Carroll who had recently returned from reporting on the Ebola crises in Sierra Leone.  Kingsley Napley wanted to make a donation and ideally was looking for a charity that was making the biggest impact on the ground.  Lisa recommended Street Child - she described them as the charity that was making a real difference at a grass roots level - galvanising the local resources to provide vital support to children, many of whom were orphaned by Ebola, and the wider community.
 
Now in 2020 Street Child have launched a COVID-19 Emergency Appeal to deal with the growing crises that is developing in many of the poorest countries in Africa and Asia – the pandemic is a few weeks behind where we are in the UK but whereas we are dealing with a health crises, many of these countries are facing a humanitarian crises of epic proportions – not just due to a poorly resourced health infrastructure (some countries with only a handful of ventilators), but also a lack of food and basic sanitation available to the poorest and most vulnerable.  Street Child has a huge amount of experience in how to provide effective emergency assistance following Ebola, but most importantly it has the network of local organisations and “boots on the ground” which is vital at a time where travel is severely restricted and time is critically short. 

Street Child have produced a series of blogs and a recorded webinar setting out the scale of the crises and the complexities when working in these regions – I hope you agree that the work that they are doing together with their network of 44 national actors across 14 countries is inspiring.