Your partnership is critical to help support our most vulnerable neighbors in Brooklyn as the pandemic continues to impact our communities. Support of our Brooklyn COVID-19 Response Fund allows us to fuel essential relief services across the borough—including critical work to support survivors of domestic violence. 

While shelter-in-place regulations are meant to decrease the spread of COVID-19 and increase our collective safety as a community, home is not a safe place for everyone. Domestic violence providers have warned that staying at home due to social distancing measures will lead to more abuse for survivors of domestic violence and intimate partner violence. 

COVID-19 will intensify the needs of survivors—both those who are sheltering in place with their abusers and those who are now in emergency shelters—especially within communities of color. From February to March, Brooklyn COVID-19 Response Fund grantee Sakhi for South Asian Women observed a 53% drop in the number of calls to their helpline—just one of the many indicators that survivors are at increased risk at this time without a safe space to seek support. 

Your continued support is essential to help vulnerable Brooklynites survive in the midst of this public health crisis. 

In the video below, our President and CEO Cecilia Clarke, Program Officer Amy Chou Sheikh, and Executive Director of Sakhi for South Asian Women, Kavita Mehra discuss the latest on our Brooklyn COVID-19 Response Fund and the implications of the public health crisis on domestic violence, and answer questions from Foundation supporters: