A new innovative fund has launched in Dubai to help crises-stricken communities by giving them ownership. Legatum, a Dubai-based investment partnership, launched a USD half billion global crisis-response initiative called the Resilio Fund.

Its approach is different from traditional, top-down donor models, as it places resources and decision-making directly in the hands of crisis affected communities. This is the first time Legatum has launched one of its global funds from the UAE.

The CEO of Resilio Fund, Fanta Toure, explained that the usual way charities work is a top-down model, an approach which has multiple levels of management before it reaches the intended recipient.

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“The traditional [model] tends to take longer to reach communities that are suffering and that are affected by crisis and tends to be a lot more expensive to deliver by virtue of the type of infrastructures that exist and what it takes to deliver this type of support,” Toure told Khaleej Times.

The Resilio Fund prides itself on efficiently helping affected communities by supporting them in what they are already doing; rather than just giving them aid, Resilio reaches out to those community leaders that already have plans and initiatives in place and supports them in their endeavours.“At Resilio, we're trying to flip the model on its head a little bit and say we're not coming to save anyone,” she added.

Guy Cave, the president of Legatum Foundation, which oversees the Resilio Fund, said that what sparked the idea for this innovative approach was when he was in Myanmar, when it was struck by a cyclone in 2008.“I saw then that by giving microgrants to communities after a massive disaster, you could support what they were already doing in a way that was much more effective and much more dignifying than the kind of traditional aid,” Cave told Khaleej Times.

Shrinking donations

Malen Serato, one of Resilio Fund's programme partners based in the Philippines, said that her home country is constantly suffering by many crises, both natural and human-induced. Serato, who works directly with crisis-stricken communities, said that there has also been a shrinking space for community-based organizations and had once seen an NGO's accounts get frozen when she used to work there.

“There has to be a system change,” she said.“We are being flooded year after year, we [are hit] by earthquakes. If you see the news in the Philippines, there's an ongoing investigation of about a trillion worth of pesos of substandard and ghost flood projects. And now here comes another typhoon. And as of [Wednesday], more than 80 people have been killed.”

During the launch event on Wednesday, the UAE Special Envoy for Business and Philanthropy Badr Jafar said in a speech that humanitarian assistance is the highest in modern history, with 300 Mn people in need.“The UN's 2025 appeal is $44 Bn and only a third is financed,” he said.“These aren't just funding gaps; they are human gaps. Classrooms not reopened, homes not rebuilt, livelihoods not restored. Yet this is not a moment for despair, it's a moment for redesign.”

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