On Sep. 9, CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), the emergency relief nonprofit organization co-founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee, announced it will offer private, for-profit COVID-19 testing services to film and television productions. Starting with Los Angeles-based production units, CORE aims to help cure the state’s economy and enable production companies to safely resume projects with testing.
In response to lack of government funding for COVID-19 testing and relief, CORE operations have been primarily dependent on private donations to fund free testing for at-risk and low-income communities. This private testing model will allow CORE to fund and expand its CORE 8 initiative, an approach to COVID-19 relief that combines testing with contact tracing. 100 percent of the net profits from their paid testing model will go towards supporting the organization’s community testing programs. While the organization is launching this effort with testing for Los Angeles-based production companies, they plan to expand their services throughout the country.
CORE is offering private testing to production units first due to the highly contained and close-knit nature of the communities. The organization has been commissioned by the AFI Film School to provide testing services for their student film productions.
“We have expanded to private testing to help offset the amount of funding necessary to continue offering free testing and critical relief services for vulnerable communities who have been significantly – and disproportionately – impacted by the pandemic. We could no longer wait for government agencies to respond by providing additional funding and support. This is a small step towards securing funds to keep our nonprofit operations afloat,” said CORE Co-Founder and CEO Ann Lee.
To learn more, visit https://www.coreresponse.org/.
