COVID-19

Through our WASH and health experience and our current programs in Asia and Africa, DevWorks is responding to the COVID-19 global pandemic. DevWorks’ capacity and networks will be put to use during this tremendously challenging period. Given the heightened interest in and need for developing safe water, sanitation and hygiene practices, neglecting to do so in communities that are highly vulnerable in the best of times is simply not an option.

Based on our current programming, DevWorks is emphasizing the following initiatives that assist community and institutional partners in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. These include:

• Mobilizing existing networks of health professionals, local community-based WASH promoters, as well as civil society leaders and effectively engaging them in subsequent activities
• Revising promotional materials and approaches to address not only traditional hygiene behaviors such as handwashing with soap (HWWS), but other needed safe practices
• Ramping-up water supply work that supports all of the above
• Developing approaches that empower economically disadvantaged and/or remote communities to respond to the current threat
• Assisting health care facilities in improving their own WASH profiles
• Ensuring gender and social equity policies and actions, without which, such policies and actions risk not only addressing clear needs, but exacerbating the important issues faced by women and other disadvantaged groups
• Engaging the private sector throughout the above through their involvement in product and service provision, as well as CSR

If you are interested in joining our COVID-19 response, please email dcadmin@devworks.org.