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Responding to COVID-19

Our Response to COVID-19

The staff and Board of the Disability Rights Fund (DRF) and the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund (DRAF) are committed to continuing our work while adhering to COVID-19 health and safety guidelines. We recognize that responsive and flexible grantmaking is necessary for Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) and persons with disabilities more generally to survive and realign their advocacy work to key current issues. As a result, in 2020, we pivoted more than 80% of active grants to support grantees’ needs and solutions arising from the pandemic. We also revised our grantmaking guidelines for new projects to include a focus on the pandemic and those most marginalized in the disability movement, including women with disabilities. We developed a 2020-21 Bridge Strategy to guide us at a strategic level in this unprecedented context.  Read the message we sent to our community and the message we sent to our grantees and applicants.

Grantees Take Action for an Inclusive COVID-19 Response

Woman Talking

Across the globe, the OPDs we support are on the frontlines of advocating for an inclusive response to COVID-19 so that no one is left behind. Read about their advocacy results and also interviews from the frontline.

Monitoring Global Disability Rights Amid the Pandemic

Data collected by the COVID-19 Disability Rights Monitor, a rapid independent monitoring project that DRF/DRAF collaborated on with six other organizations, indicates a continued lack of access by persons with disabilities to food, medication, and essential supplies.

We hope the study’s publication catalyzes urgent action in the weeks and months to come, as transmission rates continue to rise in many countries and persons with disabilities are again subjected to restrictions which have already had severe consequences. Read the COVID-19 Disability Rights Monitor Global Report.  

The COVID-19 DRM report and findings have been featured in:

  • Al-Jazeera’s People & Power investigation of the negative impact of COVID-19 on persons with disabilities. Watch the documentary series.
  • Validity Foundation’s “Tackling Torture” webinar and article series. The series includes two of DRF/DRAF grantees – SIGAB (Indonesia) and ALDIN (Nigeria). Read the article and anthology.

For more information