We are Citizens UK, the home of community organising in the UK, supporting alliances of faith, education, charity and community organisations working together for justice. Our 450 member organisations are working hard to support the hundreds of thousands of people who are particularly impacted by the Covid-19 crisis: from schools keeping canteens open to feed hungry families, to faith groups delivering to neighbours in quarantine, not to mention the countless people phoning or video-calling isolated members of their communities.

The need is great. Some of the solutions will come from campaigning, our bread and butter, which we are already starting to do. But for some people, their urgent needs cannot wait. So we are creating this responsive fund to ensure that our member organisations can support the people who need it most.

Your support will go towards helping our chapters and members to practically support people made particularly vulnerable by the Covid-19 crisis. Examples of the kinds of needs our communities are facing right now include:

- Emergency food parcels, as Holy Trinity Church in Lewisham have started to do for families from local schools who are facing food poverty

- Internet and IT equipment, as we have provided for some of the undocumented mothers in our national diaspora leadership team who can now participate in meetings online

- Hardship funds for where emergencies arise, as was done when a member primary school paid to fix the oven of a struggling single father so his family could eat hot food

If there are any leftover funds, they will go towards supporting smaller member organisations to continue campaigning with their Citizens alliance over the next year.