By Barbara Grantham, CARE Canada President and CEO
While you may have typically seen messages about Giving Tuesday during the holiday season, tomorrow is a global day of giving and unity specifically in response to COVID-19.
Giving Tuesday Now invites Canadians to join together and demonstrate the power of our collective generosity. COVID-19 affects us all…but it affects us all differently.
This pandemic has really highlighted for me social inequities here in Canada and, more deeply, around the world. In the daily headlines, these inequities are laid bare for all to see. Some of the most vulnerable members of our communities are facing the worst consequences and are paying the highest price. While some of us are safe at home, others are working tirelessly—relentlessly—to keep all of us safe. And we know that as Canadians, we have help and support that doesn’t exist or isn’t available to women, girls and their families in many other countries around the world.
Yet I also believe that in every crisis, there is opportunity. In a recent conversation, fellow leaders and I asked ourselves: ‘What do we do with this moment?’
And that’s really the question all of us are struggling with, isn’t it?
In the course of just a few weeks, nearly everything has changed. While we used to wake up each morning with a clear expectation of that day, life is no longer so clear, so predictable. Rather than seeing the day ahead with the clarity of a telescope, each day is now more like looking through a kaleidoscope, with the patterns and prisms changing with each turn. It’s hard to adjust to this continual unpredictability. But it also offers us an opportunity.
For this moment is an opportunity to ask ourselves what we want the next ‘normal’ to look like and come together with others to make it happen.
COVID-19 affects us all…but it affects us all differently.
Barbara Grantham
CARE Canada President and CEOFor the team at CARE Canada, we are putting great consideration into how we can better support women and girls in developing countries to not only survive this crisis, but to forge a more equal and resilient world, in and through this COVID epidemic.
Tomorrow, on Giving Tuesday Now, this question of opportunity is here for all of us: What will and can we do in this moment? How can each one of us make this moment count? What do we want the next normal to look like? Each of us has an important role to play in answering these questions.
What I know to be true is that people have needs, and the role of organizations like CARE is to meet those needs. So my focus tomorrow, on Giving Tuesday, is to think about and act on the steps I can take to ensure the team at CARE, working to help some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls, has the tools and resources needed to make the biggest impact—now, when the need is so profound.
We hope you’ll join us.
~Barbara
PS. Watch our social media channels tomorrow for inspirational posts on how we can all take action for a more equal, resilient world.