The Next Phase: Agile Communication and Community Engagement for COVID-19 Resilience

"How can the international community work with local actors to reach remote rural African communities using agile communications and community engagement to create COVID-19 resilience?"

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, with new strains of the virus spreading and vaccines being distributed, there is still fear, vaccine scarcity, and much more. In the context of rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, these factors pose unique challenges. Communication for development (C4D) methods provide an opportunity to ensure rural populations can stay protected into the second year of this global crisis and beyond. This webinar, hosted by Farm Radio International, discussed what is being done and what is next for the international community when it comes to fighting the disease with information, including through use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Moderated by Sylvie Harrison (Manager, Radio Craft at Farm Radio International), the webinar featured speakers including:

• Kevin Perkins, Farm Radio International's Executive Director - Kevin discussed the ways in which COVID-19 changed the work of Farm Radio (also described in part in a March 2020 blog post here). This organisation's COVID-19 response project used new and traditional channels to listen to the feedback of thousands of broadcasters and connect these communication professionals to local and international experts. Farm Radio International reached out to partner radio stations to make sure they had the information and support they needed to offer their listeners accurate and timely fact-based information about this new health crisis. It also meant helping radio partners connect with their peers to understand how their communities are being impacted and the information services they would need to keep themselves healthy and whole in the face of the pandemic. Communication and community engagement has and will continue to be a critical part of the organisation's efforts to wrestle COVID-19 to the ground and to help communities, families, and nations recover what they lost.
• Benjamin Fiafor, Country Representative, Ghana, and Hannah Tellier, Program Assistant, Farm Radio International - Benjamin and Hannah described their work with a network of more than 1,000 broadcasting partners in 41 African countries. For instance, they played clips of a radio spot written by Farm Radio International and then translated and recorded in Swahili by broadcasters to demonstrate "the power of radio in a time of crisis" - especially when the programming is in local language(s) and interactive, allowing listeners to call in to ask questions. They stressed the need for partnership and collaboration, saying that radio, mobile phones, and other digital tools allow for wide reach with hyper-local information, while also being adaptive and responsive to changing community needs (e.g., to correct specific types of misinformation).
• Sulakshana Gupta, Regional Director for Southern Africa, Viamo - As a journalist and social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) expert, Sulakshana remarked on the increased willingness - and necessity - to leverage digital solutions, such as interactive voice response (IVR), across multiple communication channels when responding to COVID-19. She talked about some of the training Viamo has offered in sub-Saharan Africa during the pandemic, as well as its data collection efforts (e.g., multi-country polls) to monitor COVID-19 trends around knowledge, attitudes, etc. In 2021, the organisation is looking at how they can support vaccination efforts based on, for example, their past work with the Grameen Foundation to deploy the Ebola vaccine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, where they not only trained community health workers but also helped the Ministry of Health to ensure vaccine compliance so that people who received one dose got a pre-recorded message to remind them to receive the second one.
• Mariana Palavra, C4D Specialist (Humanitarian Preparedness & Response), UNICEF - Based on her work at the UNICEF West and Central Africa regional office (and her past work as a journalist in Macau and Portugal), Mariana emphasised the power of local communities. Looking forward, Mariana stressed that it is important to listen to and respect these communities, such as through feedback mechanisms that allow UNICEF to understand and address rumours, and to empower communities to enact their own solutions. The response is now focused on questions and doubts about vaccination and variants. (For more on UNICEF's approach, click here to access a related summary.)
• Andy Pattison, Team Lead, Digital Channels, World Health Organization (WHO) - Andy discussed a few of the over 100 projects WHO has launched in the past year with tech companies and other partners, such as efforts to get WHO content (vs. rumours) into people's existing channels (e.g., smartphone apps). He noted that future efforts need to be localised, collaborative, and respectful of local communities. One of WHO's major areas of concern is tackling misinformation, especially around vaccines in communities of colour. He called on organisations and the private sector to collaborate widely, quickly, and altruistically.

A question-and-answer section followed. For example, during a discussion about vaccine hesitancy, Andy Pattison described WHO projects with community leaders that aim to debunk myths that are specific to certain religions (e.g., that the vaccines are not halal). Other presenters fielded questions on the use of WhatsApp to stop misinformation and why training journalists can be an effective way of providing correct information to many people. Because no one organisation can go it alone, the importance of collaboration emerged as a key lesson learned to take forward in C4D responses to the pandemic.