GRAN Actions

ON COVID-19 Pandemic Response and recovery : 

• Actions on a Just Recovery:  Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) email campaign. In the lead-up to the throne speech on September 23, our Finance Minister needs to hear from people in Canada who want a recovery plan that protects the health of people and the planet. CAPE invites us to send a message directly to Finance Minister Freeland.  A modifiable template is available here. 
• Write a letter to your local newspaper or to your MP in support of a global response.  GRAN has developed message templates that are available by clicking here.
• Results Canada Campaign, Leave No One Behind, is encouraging everyone to make their views known about the need for Canada to invest at least 1% of Canada’s COVID-19 response (CA$1.5 billion) in new and additional Official Development Assistance towards an emergency global response. Click here to learn more and to access resources to help you confidently write an Op Ed or Letter to the Editor, share messages on social media, or meet with your MP.
• The Canadian Food Grains Bank has developed a postcard to send by email to your MP, asking Canada to play a leadership role in reducing food insecurity and poverty in the wake of the COVID pandemic.  Click here for the e-postcard.
• Deliver for Good is a global campaign sponsored by Women Deliver to encourage decision makers to apply a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). GRAN is supportive of this Campaign which calls for better policies, programming, and investments in girls and women. Right now, Deliver for Good is asking people to send an open letter to governments asking them to apply a gender lens to COVID-19 recovery. The letter is available here.

​On Climate Justice:

• Participate in the Global Day of Action on September 25th organized by the school strike movement for climate action, Fridays for Future.

ON ACCESS TO MEDICINES:

• Access to COVID-19 vaccine and treatments: MSF (Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières) is circulating an e-petition demanding that Canada’s Minister of Health enact safeguards to ensure that vaccines, diagnostics and treatments developed with public funding are affordable and accessible to all people and health systems that need them. MSF plans to deliver signatures to the Minister sometime in mid-October.  If you've not yet signed this petition, click here to do so.  And consider sharing it with others to raise awareness and invite more support.  
• Access to TB treatment: A big thank you to those who signed MSF's e-petition urging pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to lower the price of bedaquiline, a drug for the treatment of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB).  120,707 people signed the petition. On July 6^th, Johnson & Johnson announced a reduced price of US $1.50 per day for bedaquiline, an important step that will allow more people with drug-resistant forms of TB to access this lifesaving drug.  

On Access to Education: 

GRAN's Education Working Group suggests the following resources for taking the opportunity to learn more about access to education globally :

• Education for the world's refugee children:  Learn about the challenges refugees face in accessing education by reading this GRAN backgrounder.  
• Database: If you would like to know more about the state of education in sub-Saharan Africa, take some time to explore UNESCO’s new data base called the “World Inequality Database on Education” (WIDE).  WIDE highlights the powerful influence of circumstances, such as wealth, gender, ethnicity and location, over which people have little control but which play an important role in shaping their opportunities for education and lives.  Click here. 
• School closures during coronavirus pandemic: Almost 90% of the world's student population, 1.5 billion young people, have now had their education impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. A total of 165 countries have implemented nationwide school closures. To learn more about how these school closures are impacting the world’s children click here.