Independent Media brands are coming together to mark Refugee Week and World Refugee Day through partnerships with Refugee Week, Choose Love and War Child (Photo credit: War Child)
The Independent has donated a total of £30,000 of advertising inventory to the cause, with £10,000 for each organisation helping to amplify its outstanding work to the publication’s global audience. This builds on The Independent’s donation of £20,000 gift of inventory to War Child last year.
Its Independent Media stablemates, HuffPost UK, BuzzFeed UK and Seasoned, will also donate advertising to Refugee Week, Choose Love and War Child, signposting community, awareness and fundraising initiatives.
Embracing this year’s Refugee Week theme of ‘Community as a Superpower’, The Independent’s Voices section will continue to bring the stories of those platforming the lived experiences as refugees. The publication is welcoming long-time War Child global ambassador and actor Carey Mulligan to write a special piece on her first-hand experiences of displacement. She reflects on the traumatic effect this has on children and their families, plus how charities can offer transformative support to help refugees rebuild lives riven by displacement and dispossession.
Supporting charitable causes is hugely important to the Independent Media audience. In the past 12 months, Independent, BuzzFeed UK and HuffPost UK readers are responsible for:
- 44% of all donations to refugee charities
- 48% of all donations to human rights charities
- 41% of all donations to war relief charities
- 50% of all donations to the UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency)
Meanwhile, the Independent, BuzzFeed UK and HuffPost UK audience is responsible for £714 million in charitable donations in the last 12 months. And it doesn’t stop with monetary support. 54% of Independent, BuzzFeed UK and HuffPost UK readers volunteer their time for good causes.
Refugee Week is being championed by leading figures from the cultural sphere, supporters who are calling for fundamental acts of compassion, empathy and community inspired by engagement with art and storytelling.
Chloe Hubbard, UK editor, The Independent, explained: “As our name makes clear, The Independent is committed to non-partisan, rigorously fact-checked reporting, unbent by propaganda and politics.
“We also have a proud, unwavering commitment to vulnerable and marginalised people, which is constantly evident in our editorial and our campaigning, including our Refugees Welcome work.
“That’s why we are continuing to support Refugee Week and are once again partnering with the vitally important War Child and Choose Love. Never has it been more crucial to hear the stories from those with lived experience, the facts rather than the fiction, and come together to support the people who are escaping unimaginable horrors, just as generations have so proudly done before us.”
