We hear about ‘the power of love’ all the time – in romantic movies and in the lyrics of aching love-songs. In our work with the world’s poorest people, we are lucky enough to see the empowering nature of love in some of the most challenging circumstances. We see how love, in all its forms, can inspire us to do better, and how it can lift us up in times of crisis.

As the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sir Mark Lowcock, recently said (and not for the first time), in general, “the humanitarian financing system is still designed to wait for disasters to strike before mobilizing resources”.