Giving Compass' Take:

• The global community is standing in solidarity with the World Health Organization to combat COVID-19 through funding and collaborative efforts. 

• The WHO launched the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund in March and has since raised nearly $225 million donations. How are your charitable efforts geared toward the global response to the pandemic? 

• Read more about what donors can do about coronavirus.  

More than half a million people donate to the cause in three months.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a global community of supporters is stepping up for the World Health Organization’s efforts to stop the spread.

Since its launch in March, the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO has raised nearly $225 million in donations from more than 530,000 people across the globe and more than 150 companies.

The Fund supports WHO’s leadership fighting the virus all over the world. It is the foremost way for individuals, companies, and philanthropies to directly support WHO’s global pandemic response to ensure that all nations are able to prevent, detect, and respond to the virus, and it’s also the fastest way to get money where it’s needed most.

Combating COVID-19 remains an urgent task on an unprecedented scale. Even as many countries are easing restrictions from quarantine and lockdown, infection rates are spiking — and in some cases, resurging — in many parts of the world, including the United States.

“Global solidarity is not just an abstract ideal,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said recently. “It is our duty and our calling to come together and help each other.”

From concerned citizens to social media influencers to major global brands, the solidarity movement includes such supporters as husband, father, and cancer survivor Joshua “DiMez” DiMezza, who joined members of the online gaming community to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the global COVID-19 response; a devoted daughter in Ireland named Karen Forde who launched a fitness challenge in honor of her high-risk parents; and even pop star Lady Gaga, who personally called Apple CEO Tim Cook during a live, late-night interview to ask the company to donate to the fund. (It did).

The Fund’s work encompasses all parts of the UN system, including WHO’s humanitarian sister agencies the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and is happening on two key fronts: equipping frontline health workers across the world with lifesaving equipment, supplies, and information, and accelerating behind-the-scenes efforts to find effective testing, treatments, and vaccines.

Read the full article about working in solidarity to fight COVID-19 by MJ Altman at United Nations Foundation.