Supporting the fight against COVID-19 through Citizen Voice and Action

Adapting to COVID-19 Standard Operating Procedures in rural villages has been a challenge. District Taskforces, being really small, ware often unable to reach all households to issue hand-washing guidelines. World Vision has quickly responded to boost efforts of the Soroti District Taskforce through a Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) team, to help spread preventive messages about COVID-19 to all the communities. The team was empowered with information about stopping the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“We lacked all the information and skills about hand-washing to fight against 'corona'. Thank you, World Vision, for training the CVA working team. My community of Akuya, including children, are now armed with full preventive measures against corona,” said Ibrahim Abone, the Local Council I chairperson.

By June 2020, 900 households with about 450 people were reached by the CVA team in Morungatuny. The World Vision team also supported households to establish hand-washing facilities for families. Trained village health teams were incorporated during the campaign to support the CVA team in providing the right information to community members.

Households have quickly adopted proper hand-washing techniques. More and more households have established hand-washing facilities to help in the fight against COVID-19; increasing from 511 households in June to 1,411 in July. The number of people reached with preventive behaviour messaging on COVID–19 has also risen from 1,090 in June to 1,540 against the output target of 2,000 by July 2020.

World Vision's Morungatuny Area Programme continues to support community structures like CVA, Community Health Workers, Child Protection Committees, among others, to support the dissemination of messages on the prevention and spread of COVID-19.

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By Michael Oketch, Child Sponsorship and Development Facilitator, Soroti, Eastern Uganda