The heroes of COVID 19 - Africa's community-based organizations
As 2020 comes to a close and we take stock of the challenges faced around the world, we at Firelight want to call out an important aspect of 2020 - the extraordinary responses of community-based organizations in Southern and Eastern Africa in the face of the pandemic and its collateral damage.
In many ways, Africa’s success can be attributed to the collective response of communities and community organizations.
Overall, African countries made significant efforts to contain the coronavirus and so far have escaped early nightmare predictions. African lives have been saved thanks to the hard work of many dedicated health-care workers, rapid action and the collective response of communities.
And full credit must be given to the extraordinary effectiveness of community-based organizations.
They acted quickly, without outside funding, responding to the call of their governments to help communities prevent the virus. Unlike international organizations, they were authorized to move around even under the strictest restrictions. They delivered important prevention messages and materials and de-stigmatization approaches. They were critical to child and family strengthening in the face of the deep collateral damage of restrictions on movement and lockdowns – identifying and supporting vulnerable families, youth and children with the economic, social, educational or psychosocial support they need to survive. They were also able to quickly rally key actors – such as religious and traditional leaders – to collectively address some of the highly negative decisions that can be made in times of economic stress – such as child labor, child exploitation and child marriage. They acted because they knew of the risks but they also observed the significant hardships stemming from the pandemic mitigation measures and the ensuing physical, social and emotional challenges. They designed “responsive” actions - not only to protect and care for children in the immediate but to sure up family and child resilience.
But the crisis is not over.
The economic cost of COVID-19 prevention has been deeply felt, with the restrictions on movement and social distancing measures having impacted African economies and individuals in unprecedented ways. There are still millions of children out of school and millions of families struggling to make ends meet.
The impact of pandemic mitigation efforts has been severe – especially on children. UNICEF has declared that although the pandemic and its collateral impact has impacted everyone, it has impacted children and youth the most and they will – in the end - be its greatest victims.
Today, Firelight’s grantee partners are continuing their work – integrating new ways of supporting children and families into their daily activities, modifying their approaches to accommodate children out of school and parents out of work, looking out for higher risk children and youth and supporting vulnerable families as they also give them agency over their own lives.
Community organizations have been complementing their existing programming with targeted actions that not only support children and youth to cope and learn but also support families to thrive in these unprecedented times. Because they are local and embedded, they know where the most vulnerable families are and they can support them in the ways that matter most for today and the future.
At Firelight, we are honored to serve African community-based organizations and to support their work. That is why in 2020 we raised $700k for our community-based grantee-partners and in 2021 we will work with our donors to raise even more.
Click here to support our work and the work of our hero community-based organizations.