Earlier this year, Global Citizen launched the Recovery Plan for the World, a campaign to end COVID-19 and kickstart a global recovery, with help from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The pandemic has worsened inequalities experienced by the world’s most vulnerable populations. More than 2.5 million people have lost their lives to COVID-19, while the pandemic has set back strides to improve access to education, end hunger and starvation, and fight climate change.
For this reason, the Recovery Plan for the World will focus on five pillars: End COVID-19 for All, End the Hunger Crisis, Resume Learning Everywhere, Protect the Planet, and Advance Equity for All.
In order to get the world back on track to end extreme poverty and meet the United Nations’ Global Goals by 2030, we’re calling on everyone — from world leaders and corporations to everyday Global Citizens — to take action.
To help us achieve our goals, Global Citizen relies on our Campaign Response Network, made up of international groups and organizations that are leading the effort to reduce inequalities and help the world recover from the pandemic. Learn more about these 16 organizations below.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is an innovative global partnership working to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics. CEPI has built the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccine portfolio in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also co-leads COVAX alongside Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF, to enable equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines worldwide. In addition, CEPI has made strategic investments in vaccine manufacturing, which includes reserving capacity to manufacture doses of COVAX vaccines at a network of facilities, and securing glass vials to hold 2 billion doses of vaccine. CEPI is also investing in the “next generation” of vaccine candidates, which will give the world additional options to control COVID-19 in the future.
CGIAR
A radical realignment of global food systems could not only end hunger and malnutrition, but also bring about gender equality, prosperous livelihoods, climate solutions, and environmental health. As the world leader in agricultural science and innovation for development, CGIAR is a key player in global food systems transformation. CGIAR has a 50-year track record of innovation and research that have helped lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, and demonstrated a 10x return on investment. Recognizing food systems’ role in the COVID-19 crisis, CGIAR has mobilized to support an informed response, launching the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub to bring partners together to coordinate on research and engagement.
The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator
The Therapeutics Accelerator is coordinating critical research and development efforts, removing barriers to drug development, and scaling up treatments to address the pandemic. The Accelerator is providing fast and flexible funding at all stages from discovery and development to manufacturing, reducing risk across the process, and ensuring treatments can reach everyone who needs them, particularly the most vulnerable.
Education Cannot Wait (ECW)
Education Cannot Wait (ECW) is the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies. It was launched in 2016 by international aid actors, along with public and private donors, to address the urgent needs of 75 million children and youth whose education is disrupted by armed conflicts, disasters, and other crises. ECW provides rapid funding to immediately address needs in new and escalating crises and supports multi-year investments and stronger collaboration and coherence among emergency relief and development aid organizations to achieve quality education outcomes in protracted crises. Education Cannot Wait is hosted by UNICEF. The Fund is administered under UNICEF’s financial, human resources, and administrative rules and regulations, while operations are run by the Fund’s own independent governance structure, under the leadership of its Director, Yasmine Sherif, and its High Level Steering Group chairperson, the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown.
The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND)
The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) Testing — for COVID-19, new variants, and future health threats — is the cornerstone of keeping people, families, and communities safe. FIND works to ensure all countries have access to affordable, quality tests, and effective disease surveillance in place. We are expanding availability of today’s tests, as well as investing in tools to track emerging variants and R&D to reduce the cost of quality, easy-to-use tests, including self-tests. With partners, we evaluate test performance and inform testing strategies as part of national response plans. Fast development of WHO-approved rapid tests and increased regional manufacturing capacity are enabling rapid test prices to drop below US$2.50.
Gavi
The Gavi COVAX AMC is the innovative financing instrument that will support the participation of 92 low- and middle-income economies in the COVAX Facility — enabling access to donor-funded doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. The Gavi COVAX AMC combined with additional support for country readiness and delivery, will make sure the most vulnerable in all countries can be protected in the short term, regardless of income level.
The Global Fund
The Global Fund is designed to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria as epidemics. As a partnership of governments, civil society, technical agencies, the private sector, and people affected by the diseases, the Global Fund pools the world’s resources to strategically invest over US$4 billion a year in programs run by local experts in more than 100 countries. Since 2002 the Global Fund has disbursed over US$45.4 billion in the fight against AIDS, TB, and malaria, making it one of the largest funders of global health. These smart investments in health have saved 38 million lives.
Green Climate Fund
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) — a critical element of the historic Paris agreement — is the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realize their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) ambitions toward low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways. Fully operational since 2015, GCF follows a country-driven approach, whereby developing countries lead the Fund’s programming and implementation. In response to COVID-19, the GCF has worked with developing countries to strengthen their resilience to the COVID crisis and other future challenges in ways that foster low-emission, climate resilient development. To this end, GCF has helped developing countries to craft green, resilient recovery measures and incorporate such measures into their NDCs and recovery stimulus packages, as well as accelerated the Fund’s investments into areas that raise climate ambition and have strong socioeconomic co-benefits such as job creation, poverty alleviation, increased energy and food security, improved air and water quality, and resilient essential infrastructure.
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) — the United Nations’ rural poverty agency — is the only multilateral development institution that focuses exclusively on transforming rural economies and food systems. It works in remote regions of developing countries and fragile situations, where few aid agencies or international financial institutions venture. IFAD is helping communities to recover and build resilience through its multi-donor fund, the COVID-19 Rural Poor Stimulus Facility, which is helping to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on food supply chains by ensuring farmers have access to the inputs, markets, information, and finances they need to continue growing and selling food. IFAD also recently launched its IFAD’s Enhanced Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP+) — the largest fund dedicated to channeling climate finance to small-scale producers. It aims to mobilize US$500 million to reduce climate change threats to food security, lower greenhouse gases, and help more than 10 million people adapt to weather changes.
Local Initiatives Support Coalition (LISC)
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Local Initiatives Support Coalition (LISC) has raised $2 billion in grants, loans and equity, to help communities of color recover, while building strength and resiliency. Through these efforts, and its Project 10X initiative, LISC commits to helping close the racial health, wealth, and opportunity gaps.
Legal Empowerment Network
From unequal access to basic services to housing insecurity, the pandemic created new injustices and exacerbated many existing ones. Members of the Legal Empowerment Network — now over 2,400 justice organizations from nearly every country — are rising to meet the challenges of this moment, with little resources and at great risk to themselves. To support their vital work, Namati and the Legal Empowerment Network rallied multiple partners to establish the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund. They are mobilizing resources to distribute flexible, rapid-response grants to outstanding grassroots justice groups, and advocating for consistent, long-term investment in their essential work.
OutRight Action International
OutRight Action International is a 30-year-old nonprofit dedicated to eradicating the persecution, inequality, and violence that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) people face around the world. From its offices in seven countries and headquarters in New York, OutRight builds capacity of LGBTIQ movements, documents human rights violations, advocates for inclusion and equality, and holds leaders accountable for protecting the rights of LGBTIQ people everywhere. OutRight is a founding adviser to the private-sector Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality and has recognized consultative status at the United Nations, where it coordinates the UN LGBTI Core Group.
UNITAID
UNITAID works with partners to turn good ideas into groundbreaking solutions for global health. The impact of its partnerships shows in millions of ways every year: in children who will never get malaria because of a prevention approach the organization advanced, in people who are able to learn their HIV status through inexpensive self-test kits UNITAID created a market for, in women who avoid cervical cancer using its affordable screen-and-treat solutions, and in new hope for children and adults with drug-resistant tuberculosis.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
UNFPA is the United Nations’ sexual and reproductive health agency. Its mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA is focused on achieving three transformative results by 2030, ambitions that promise to change the world for every woman, man and young person: ending unmet need for family planning; ending preventable maternal death; and ending gender-based violence and harmful practices.
World Food Programme (WFP)
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies, and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. As the international community has committed to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition by 2030, 1 in 9 people worldwide still do not have enough to eat. Food and food-related assistance lie at the heart of the struggle to break the cycle of hunger and poverty. For its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict, WFP was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020. In 2019, WFP assisted 97 million people — the largest number since 2012 — in 88 countries.
World Health Organization (WHO)
The World Health Organization provides global leadership in public health within the United Nations system. Founded in 1948, WHO works with 194 Member States, across six regions and from more than 150 offices, to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. Its goal for 2019-2023 is to ensure that a billion more people have universal health coverage, to protect a billion more people from health emergencies, and provide a further billion people with better health and wellbeing. In the context of COVID-19, WHO harnesses the world’s technical and operational expertise to translate knowledge into coordinated action. WHO is the leader of the global incident management support team (IMST) structure, the UN Crisis Management Team (UNCMT), and a founder of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.