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In this unthinkable global pandemic, we have seen both the worst and the best of humanity. Today, we bring you some more good news, thanks to storied Italian fashion house, Gucci.
The brand has announced it is making two separate donations to crowdfunding campaigns both locally in Italy, where the company was born and based, and globally. The first is to the Italian Civil Protection Department (Protezione Civile) in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, and the second to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund in support of the World Health Organization, through a matching campaign with Facebook.
In Gucci’s home country of Italy, which has been so devastatingly affected by the crisis, €1 million will be donated to the valiant efforts of the National Civil Protection Department through Intesa Sanpaolo’s ForFunding crowd-funding platform with a dedicated webpage gucci.forfunding.it. The funds will be allocated by the Italian National Civil Protection Department, to reinforce Italy’s health services and organisations managing the emergency, with the creation of new ICU beds as a priority.
Internationally, Gucci will contribute €1 million to the United Nations Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund in support of the World Health Organization (WHO) through a Facebook US$10 million matching fundraiser. The COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund’s aim is to support WHO’s lifesaving work across countries, including to help track and understand the spread of the virus, to strengthen patient care and ICUs, to improve supplies for health personnel, including of protection devices, and to accelerate the development of vaccines and therapies.
But the brand wants your help, too. At a time when so many of us are confined to our homes and so greatly affected by the news everyday, Gucci is calling on its friends and followers from its global community — who share the same values of social justice for diversity, equality and freedom — to stand with the House in solidarity by raising funds to fight this crisis.
Rallying its #GucciCommunity with the call to action, “We Are All In This Together”, Gucci is imploring its troops to make donations in a new campaign featuring an illustration gifted by Rome-based artist MP5, which depicts a person holding their hand to their heart in a symbol of solidarity.
You will be able to donate to both crowdfunding pages, which are helping the health services by providing equipment and powering the scientists who are working on vaccines and treatments, through the “donate” feature available in the IG stories on www.instagram.com/Gucci iv. The total amount will be matched by Facebook as part of its Matching initiative. The House’s other social media channels and Gucci.com will also feature links to donate to both crowdfunding initiatives, with Gucci also putting its social media accounts, with over 70 million followers, at the disposal of the World Health Organization, to further help in amplifying official public service information to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of the community.
In an open letter announcing the initiative to the company’s employees around the world, Alessandro Michele, Creative Director of Gucci, and Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci wrote:
“This pandemic calls us to an unexpected task, but it is a call to which we respond decisively, advocating the selfless work carried out by health workers, doctors and nurses on the front lines every day in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, in Italy and in the rest of the world. Their generosity and courage light our way forward in these difficult days. By supporting each other and helping those who are most vulnerable among us, we will be able to overcome this crisis: united, even more than before.”
They concluded with these final, fighting words:
“Gucci has created a world, open and free: a Gucci global community. We ask all of you to be the Changemakers in this crisis, to stand together with us in the fight against the Coronavirus. We are all in this together.”
