Family Emergencies Far From Home

When someone has died here

The first 72 hours decide most of what follows: where the body goes, whether the family chooses repatriation or local burial or cremation, what it costs, and who pays. Families are often pressured into decisions and prices they cannot afford, in a moment when they cannot think. Our role is to slow that down, explain the options in your language, and stand beside you.

• The guide: After a death far from home — step by step, from the first phone call to the funeral.
• Prices: funeral homes must give you an itemised price list and cannot require you to buy a package. We help you compare and ask the right questions.
• Repatriation: sending a body home involves the consulate, a funeral home licensed for international shipping, airline cargo, and documents on both sides. Costs vary widely by destination. We know the steps and the typical ranges.
• The Mutual Aid Compact: Together and Stronger's associations stand together when a family loses someone without insurance and funds are needed for burial or repatriation. The Foundation coordinates with the Compact and, where there is one, with the family's own association. Read about the Compact.
• Financial bridge: the Hardship Fund can help with a deposit, a document fee or travel when a small amount unblocks the process.

When someone has died back home

Travel at short notice, sending money, missing work, and grief in isolation. We help with the practical side — fares, employer leave, sending funds safely, contacting the family's association — and with finding someone to talk to.

When there is a crisis back home

A natural disaster, a conflict, an illness, a detention. We help you find the right consular and humanitarian contacts, verify appeals before you send money (crisis periods are also scam periods), and coordinate with associations from the same country that may already be organising a response.

Consular contacts

Consulates handle death certificates for citizens, repatriation documents, emergency travel documents and, in some countries, financial help for repatriation. The Together and Stronger Consular Liaison Desk maintains contacts for many countries of origin, including Côte d'Ivoire and other West African, Latin American, Caribbean and Asian countries. Consular Desk.

Life and repatriation insurance

Nothing helps a family more in that week than a policy that pays for the funeral or the repatriation. Together and Stronger and Together and Stronger Member Services are working on group life and repatriation coverage for the association's members; the Foundation's role is to help every family that did not have it. If you are reading this before a crisis, learn about that coverage.

How we help

• A person on the phone the same day for a death or crisis.
• The guide, in your language, and help working through it.
• Comparison of funeral and repatriation options and prices.
• Coordination with the family's association, the Mutual Aid Compact and the consulate.
• A financial bridge when a small amount unblocks the process.
• Follow-up in the weeks after, when the practical wave has passed and the harder part begins.