Photo credit: Vincent Reynaud-Lacroze
For several weeks, the world has been facing a major health crisis. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) is claiming thousands of health victims, but not only that. Among the consequences of the pandemic, the closure of schools has deprived more than 1.5 billion children of an education. In order to support the most vulnerable populations, Aide et Action is trying to provide appropriate responses. Find out what activities we are developing in our different fields of intervention.
In this period of global crisis, Aide et Action's priority is to protect the vulnerable and marginalized populations that we support on a daily basis and who are, today, even more vulnerable to health and economic risks. Since the beginning of the pandemic, our teams have been assessing the impact of COVID-19 on our projects and studying how best to adapt them. But above all, we are thinking together about the possibility of setting up new actions. These are the three areas of intervention that we are currently focusing on.
Hygiene education
In the countries where we work, our teams regularly carry out awareness-raising activities on hygiene and good sanitary practices. In this crisis context, our association has strengthened its intervention with the most vulnerable, such as ethnic minorities or migrants, in order to limit the spread of the virus. Thus, in Cambodia, India, or even in RomaniaOur colleagues relay the correct instructions to follow and try to counter rumours and false beliefs about the disease. By broadcasting health advice via loudspeakers, distributing flyers or displaying panels presenting all the recommendations of the World Health Organisation, our teams do everything to get the message across, while respecting the rules of social distancing.
Material support
The people we work with live in very precarious situations. Geographical isolation, social isolation, poverty... There are many obstacles to their development. To prevent these communities from being forgotten and even more severely affected by the health crisis, we have decided to provide them with material support.
To do this, our teams distribute hygiene kits, soap, basic hand-washing equipment and food. " The idea is not to provide a health solution, but to help people cope with the next few weeks, which will be very difficult due to the containment measures "says Chandra Kiran, our South Asia Communications Manager.
Educational continuity
On the educational front, Aide et Action has decided to intervene to compensate for the closure of schools. In order to ensure a certain educational continuity, our teams will take advantage of the distribution of hygiene kits in remote communities to attach books for the children. Thus, despite the school closure, the children will be able to continue to educate themselves and learn. In addition, our association plans to develop its mobile application "Khmer learn" already in place in Cambodia. The application created by Aide et Action is available free of charge on iOs and Android platforms and offers children access to educational books and games in Khmer and ethnic minority languages. In the coming weeks, the organisation will be looking at how to create more online resources for teachers and parents to enable home-based learning in Vietnam and Laos as well.
We are here for you
If you are a sponsor or donor and would like to know more, please contact our loyalty managers Jean-Pierre and Khadija who are there to answer your questions: [email protected].
