Communities Against COVID-19 and Poverty

Communities and countries across the Asia-Pacific region are showing incredible resilience in the fight against COVID-19. But while some are gradually recovering, others find their resources more thinly stretched by the ongoing battle against the pandemic. ADB and partners Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the People’s Republic of China are helping by tapping civil society organizations (CSOs) to directly respond to the needs of the poor.

Creating Partnerships to Combat COVID-19

In 2020, ADB, with cofinancing from the Japan Fund for Prosperous and Resilient Asia and the Pacific (previously Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction), Republic of Korea e-Asia and Knowledge Partnership Fund, and the People’s Republic of China Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation Fund, started a technical assistance (TA) project to?mitigate the impact of COVID-19 through community-led interventions. Through this TA, ADB is creating new partnerships with CSOs to conduct activities that respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Grassroots efforts and community-led programs deliver impactful results and high value for money. This COVID-19 project leverages the on-the-ground presence and experience of civil society organizations to respond in areas where formal assistance channels may not reach,” said Pinsuda Alexander, economist, ADB. The TA, which began in November 2020, covers seven countries—Armenia, Cambodia, the Cook Islands, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Thailand. It supports risk communication campaigns plus contact tracing and reporting systems, helps train community health workers, distributes personal protective equipment, establishes handwashing points, and raises awareness of COVID-19 vaccines. Furthermore, the TA is working with community members to find alternative livelihoods for work affected by COVID-19. This initiative is currently strengthening the CSOs’ community-based activities that mitigate and prevent COVID-19 spread, provide social protection to the vulnerable, including the elderly, and give economic support to those who lost jobs and livelihood because of the pandemic.

Grassroots efforts and community-led programs deliver impactful results and high value for money. This COVID-19 project leverages the on-the-ground presence and experience of civil society organizations to respond in areas where formal assistance channels may not reach.

– Pinsuda Alexander, ADB economist

Communities Lead the Way Out of the Pandemic

As one example, the TA has been supporting many CSOs on the ground in Mongolia, where a consortium of 26 CSOs led by the Mongolian Remote Sensing Society (MRSS) partnered with the government to spearhead a continuum of activities preventing COVID-19 transmission, training community health workers, and providing economic support to communities. The consortium set up workgroups in targeted areas that focused on three distinct activities: prevention and mitigation, social protection, and livelihood support.

For prevention and mitigation, the consortium has produced a prevention communications campaign featuring short videos urging people to vaccinate, as well as posters, infographics, and stickers informing people of health protocols. The consortium also set up hand sanitation points at strategic locations and distributed sanitation packages to complement the campaign.

For social protection, the consortium provided some basic needs to vulnerable groups, such as elderly people in rural areas, while providing food assistance to those who could not work.

The MRSS consortium also provided training and business support for affected communities on vegetable planting, greenhouse construction, chicken farming, and beekeeping as alternative livelihoods to help those who lost jobs and livelihoods during the pandemic. The project produced roughly 4,000 training handbooks on vegetable planting and greenhouse construction and maintenance. These were distributed, along with 14 types of vegetable seeds. Shop owners and small businesses were provided with laptops, smartphones, and modems to help them around COVID-19 restrictions by shifting to online commerce. All these forms of assistance were based on a survey the consortium conducted to determine the real issues and needs of the communities.

The TA is also supporting another nongovernment organization (NGO) in Mongolia, Good Neighbors. With ADB’s support, Good Neighbors is helping vulnerable groups such as women and the poor in the?ger?area, which are settlements of low- and middle-income households. As a first step to addressing the impact of COVID-19, the group trained 50 community health workers to strengthen informal health systems and enhance people’s basic hygiene capacity. They prioritized women as COVID-19 severely affected their livelihood and domestic?work. The health workers provided girls with knowledge and kits on personal hygiene. So far, about 5,000 girls and women have attended the training, while about 2,000 girls were provided with personal hygiene packages. Recognizing that COVID-19 economic disruptions placed great stress on families, Good Neighbors also rolled out a family development program for 2,000 families to increase awareness of gender-based violence and form family-based groups for stronger safety nets within the community. They installed a hotline to provide women and girls with easy access to help in times of distress. The NGO also provides vocational and education training to community members, half of whom are women, to help those who lost their jobs during the pandemic regain their incomes.

More initiatives on the ground are expected as other CSOs progress in their activities, and the TA continues through to 2023.

Read more stories from the ADB Partnership Report 2021.