Dear friend,
Jo Cox, a 41-year-old member of the UK Parliament and mother of two young children, was brutally and senselessly murdered on Thursday.
Jo was very close to our hearts at the Freedom Fund. I first met Jo when she was working for Oxfam a decade ago, and we worked together to help mobilise world attention around the atrocities in Darfur. We became close friends, and I turned to Jo for support when setting up the Freedom Fund in early 2014. She responded with her usual enthusiasm and energy, and soon became my first colleague at the Freedom Fund.
In her time with us, Jo was instrumental in putting the Freedom Fund on a sound footing to successfully carry out its mission to fight modern slavery around the world. She left us to pursue her parliamentary career, and it’s simply incomprehensible that she lost her life while tirelessly serving her constituents.
Jo believed to her core that there is more that unites us than divides us, and she was killed for her beliefs. Her death has not only devastated a family; it has attacked the ideals we all cherish most. The very values Jo lived for.
We are honouring Jo’s legacy by carrying forward the message she now symbolises around the world: We have more in common than that which divides us. We unite in the shared belief that each of us can take action to advance the values and causes that Jo championed so admirably throughout her life.
In the coming days, we are promoting this message with the hashtags #moreincommon and #lovelikeJo, and we invite you to share these with your networks. We are also coming together as her friends and colleagues to organise events around the world – in her constituency in Batley and Spen, and in London, Nairobi, Beirut, New York, Washington DC, Brussels and many other places. You can find details of the events and how you can participate here. We have also set up a fundraising page for the causes closest to Jo’s heart, and you can find that page here.
Let me leave you with Jo’s words from her maiden Parliamentary speech: “We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than that which divides us.”
Yours in grief,
Nick
Upcoming Gatherings to Honour Jo Cox:
On Wednesday, June 22nd (her 42nd birthday)
London: 4pm-5pm, Trafalgar Square https://www.facebook.com/events/1369130213102106
Batley and Spen: 4pm-5pm https://www.facebook.com/events/1386263164723616
New York City: 11am-12pm, UNICEF https://www.facebook.com/events/270194073341545
Washington, D.C.: 11am-12pm https://www.facebook.com/events/251132971921677
Brussels: 5pm-6pm, Ancienne Belgique https://www.facebook.com/events/725140907588807
Nairobi: 6pm-7pm https://www.facebook.com/events/1732267390378672