Happy Holidays from CORE Group!
Dear CORE Group colleagues,

Thank you so much for your support and engagement throughout 2020! It has been a challenging year for the global community but we hope you have a relaxing and safe holiday season and are gearing up for 2021 with renewed hope for a better year ahead.

As we start another year of partnership towards better health for all, we would like to look back at the successes of 2020 and shares exciting opportunities for 2021.
CORE Group Membership
With your support, we expanded our membership to include international organizations and students, and welcomed a 22% increase in new members from 2019. Our membership has now grown to include more than 188 non-governmental organizations, students, advocates, academia, and private sector working together to advance community health. Learn more and become a CORE Group member!
Lives in the Balance
CORE Group co-sponsored two global virtual events with PMNCH centered on the theme of Lives in the Balance in support of women, children and adolescents' health during the COVID-19 pandemic. These offerings expanded global reach of the consortium to benefit member access to information and advocacy platforms with over 3,000 participants livestreaming the July event. 
COVID-19 Global Response Coordination
Rapid response and coordination to support CORE Group Members response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of weekly webinars, as early as February when CORE Group launched a weekly COVID-19 Global Pandemic Response Coordination series to address the most pressing information, advocacy, and implementation needs of our global partners, included a showcase of digital health platforms, gender issues, ongoing immunization needs, children and youth, conflict and COVID, and a special focus on Latin America conducted in Spanish.
The Board of Directors play a critical role in the successes and new directions of the CORE Group. This year, CORE Group welcomed four new members of the board, expanding our commitment to representation that is gender balanced and illustrative of our broad global reach.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
CORE Group has placed a special emphasis on supporting Woman of Color by instituting a special internship program that was launched in December. Providing opportunities to highlight the skills and contributions of women within our membership and our community partnerships around the world is an established commitment of the CORE Group team. We will also be partnering with BridgePeople to host innovative workshops on Racial Justice and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Strategy in January and February 2021.
In collaboration with our Working Groups and Interest Groups, we organized 14 knowledge sharing events that reached over 2,500 individuals globally.
We continued engaging with our programs through coordinating sessions at global meetings, hosting webinars, supporting pandemic response, and disseminating technical findings and resources.

COVID-19 Digital Classroom
The COVID-19 Digital Classroom is a global initiative to provide high-quality, medically reviewed, multimedia content and training courses for community-based health workers and local communities globally. There are currently over 1,221 learners enrolled from 78 countries globally. The COVID-19 Digital Classroom is a partnership between the Community Health Academy at Last Mile Health, CORE Group, Medical Aid Films, TechChange, Translators without Borders, and UNICEF. 
C19 Virtual Marketplace
The C19 Virtual Marketplace aggregates and matches needs and offers in real-time to provide direct access to information, supplies, and other resources. Suppliers can connect directly with the end-users of their products and deliver resources like PPE and training to where it’s needed most. To date, the value of commodities posted on the platform tops
$410 million with more than $133 million in commodities and informational offerings claimed by organizations in need.
CORE Group Polio Project
Congrats to our CORE Group Polio Project (CGPP) team for their monumental achievements this year! The CGPP teams in 7 countries globally continued to press ahead with critical community based surveillance activities, produce COVID-19 risk communication materials, present at global conferences, and share their expertise with the global community through high impact journal publications. This year, the WHO African Region was declared free of wild polio virus and CGPP Nigeria’s contribution to this remarkable feat was critical as the last polio-endemic country in the region.
Volunteer Ward
Supervisor, CGPP Nigeria
What's in Store for 2021?
Save the Date for GHPC21! CORE Group's next Global Health Practitioner Conference (GHPC21), Unlocking Potential: Prioritizing Child and Adolescent Health and Well-Being in the New Decade will be held virtually from January 27-28, 2021. Registration coming soon!
The most up-to-date information on issues related to the ongoing pandemic, including advocacy for COVID-19 vaccine equity and access for community health facilities in low- and middle-income countries based on CORE Group’s leadership role in support of civil society inputs into the global COVAX Facility on behalf of the GAVI CSO Steering Committee.
In 2021, we will also continue advocacy and global leadership through our engagement with PMNCH, GAVI CSO, Academy of Nutrition, Child Health Task Force...and more!
CORE Group | coregroup.org