Cuba is facing one of its toughest moments in decades. Across the island, families are living through long power cuts, severe shortages of food and medicine, and a deep uncertainty about how they’ll get through each day. Parents are struggling to keep children fed. Elders are going without the most basic essentials. Entire neighbourhoods have spent weeks without water, and everyday life has become a test of resilience no family should have to face.
This is not distant or abstract. Our friends and family are experiencing kitchens without gas, classrooms without electricity, and hospital wards without essential medical supplies. And it’s happening now.
Local observers warn that the island is on the brink of an imminent humanitarian collapse. The situation has been created by harsh external pressures and the recent US energy embargo on Cuba, but it is also rooted in longstanding structural problems – decades of economic mismanagement and limited political transparency that have left Cuba extremely vulnerable at a moment like this.
And so, as many of you have been asking how to help, we’re launching something simple, direct and urgently needed:
The Cuba Community Crisis Fund
This crowdfunder is 100% focused on helping Cuban people directly.
Every donation goes toward purchasing food, hygiene items, and over the counter medicines.
All supplies are delivered through trusted community networks – never through state channels – ensuring help reaches the most vulnerable households.
If you’ve travelled with us over the years, or simply care about human dignity, you already know this truth:
Cuban people are warm, generous, creative, joyful and fiercely resilient.
Right now, they need solidarity more than ever.
Even a small contribution will make a real, immediate difference to families under immense pressure.
👉 Donate here
Why This Matters to Us
Cubania Travel and Caledonia Worldwide – two small, owner-managed specialist companies – joined forces to do something practical that would help the communities we know and love. We have both spent nearly 30 years working in Cuba. Our community-focused trips and small group tours have introduced thousands of travellers to the real Cuba:
its creativity, its culture, its humour, its music, its human warmth.
We’ve built relationships with families, guides, farmers, dancers, teachers, cooks, drivers – the everyday people who make Cuba magical. And today, many of those same people are facing a crisis unlike anything we’ve seen in our decades of collaboration.
We stand firmly with the Cuban people: their families, their communities, their future.
What Cuba needs right now is solidarity rooted in realism, compassion, and respect – not romanticism, not politics.
Just clear, practical help.
Other Trusted Ways to Support
We know many of you prefer giving through established NGOs, so here are additional reputable avenues we trust:
CARE International
A respected global NGO with long experience delivering humanitarian aid.
🔗 https://www.careinternational.org.uk/
Humanity & Inclusion
Working in Cuba for decades, with staff on the ground ensuring aid reaches those who need it most.
🔗 https://www.humanity-inclusion.org.uk/en/country/cuba
Send Money Directly to People You Know (via Fonmoney)
Send USD in cash to a home address in Cuba.
(Not available for U.S.-issued bank cards.)
🔗 https://www.fonmoney.com
Together, We Can Make a Difference
Cuba needs friends.
It needs compassion.
It needs clear-eyed, human-centred solidarity.
If you can, please donate.
If you can’t donate right now, please share this blog and ask your friends to contribute – it helps more than you know.
👉 Cuba Community Crisis Fund
🔗 https://chuffed.org/project/175744-cuba-community-crisis-fund
Thank you – gracias de corazón – for standing with the Cuban people at this critical moment.
