Women Oriented Skill Development Project for COVID Response and Recovery

The proposed project aims to increase the resilience of women and girls against the impacts of COVID-19 through the implementation of inclusive COVID response and recovery strategies. Through the project we shall collaborate with various organizations and enable vulnerable women to cope with the various challenges that the pandemic poses. The project will develop a comprehensive package to address the various issues that women across the globe face. There will be awareness generation, advocacy campaigns and capacity building to reduce the vulnerability of women against COVID-19.

Annual budget

Brief background of the organisation, including goals and current programme focus (no more than 400 words)

ABC International is a forum of professionals and social activists from various countries who are working towards women empowerment. Established in the year 2000 we are trying to create a society that respects and provides equal rights to all its members. Our dream is to see each and every member of the society to have access to quality education, a healthy life and a society free of exploitation and violence. The mission of ABC international is to empower women by equipping them with knowledge, so that they can improve their socio-economic status and participate meaningfully in the development of society.

Current Programme Focus: ABC international is currently engaged in projects that focus on reducing the vulnerability of women across the globe. We are currently working in over 40 countries and helping women organisations through various capacity building and training programs. Considering the pandemic has impacted women and enhanced their vulnerability to various socio-economic and health issues, ABC international along with its partner organization is working to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on women.

Purpose/summary of the proposal (maximum 50 words)

The proposed project aims to increase the resilience of women and girls against the impacts of COVID-19 through the implementation of inclusive COVID response and recovery strategies.
Through the project we shall collaborate with various organizations and enable vulnerable women to cope with the various challenges that the pandemic poses. The project will develop a comprehensive package to address the various issues that women across the globe face. There will be awareness generation, advocacy campaigns and capacity building to reduce the vulnerability of women against COVID-19.

Target Area and beneficiaries/stakeholders

Women and Girls.

Total budget requested and duration

USD **************

Duration 15 months

Project background: ( What is the problem you are trying to solve?) 200-300 words

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone, but the impact has been different on each one of us. Some people lost their jobs, while some lost their lives and some struggled with mental health issues. The pandemic has been a challenge to all humanity and various local, national and international organizations have come together to cope with the adverse impacts of the Pandemic.
The pandemic has caused substantial impact to the women and girls worldwide and has had a regressive effect on progress made towards gender equality. A recent study conducted by WHO through Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health agency brought forward an alarming similar trend across India, Sub-saharan Africa, Latin America and Caribbean. Of the 30,000 respondents surveyed, poor mental health, loss of income and violence and disruption of education were identified as the consequence of COVID. The survey highlights the need for taking a sensitive approach towards women participation in redevelopment to avoid alienating and disenfranchising millions across many developing countries. A more gender inclusive approach will be required in the economic growth that rebounds post COVID. This is especially true for the poor where COVID has hit very hard. The pandemic has adversely impacted the socio-economy, health, mental health and overall wellbeing of women and girls across the globe.
A recent report by the UN global compact suggests some of the impacts COVID-19 on women as below.

70% of the healthcare workers risking their lives are women.
60% of women’s employment is in the informal economy with few protections against dismissal and limited access to social protection.
The global gender pay gap is at 16% leaving women more vulnerable to economic downturn.
Domestic violence has increased by 25% in some countries as a result of lockdowns.
Women’s healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health, is harder to access as resources are diverted.
Women already do three times more unpaid care work as men. With the virus spreading and 850 million children around the world home from school, the additional burden continues to primarily fall on women.

Proposed Idea

The proposed project aims to increase the resilience of women and girls against the impacts of COVID -19 through the implementation of inclusive covid response and recovery strategies. Research and our previous work with women has given us enough evidence that diseases and disasters increase the vulnerabilities of women and worsen the existing inequalities. Therefore, when developing a recovery and response program towards any disaster /pandemic it becomes essential to make it inclusive and gender sensitive.

The proposed project will help in developing a gender sensitive strategy that will be applicable to women across the globe. The project uses a participatory approach and would take help of women led organizations to implement the project in their respective countries. The vulnerability assessment will help us to identify hotspots and accordingly develop coping mechanisms to suit the socio, cultural and economical conditions of the respective regions. Through the project we shall collaborate with various organizations and enable vulnerable women to cope with the various challenges that the pandemic poses. The project will develop a comprehensive package to address the various issues that women across the globe face. There will be awareness generation, advocacy campaigns and capacity building to reduce the vulnerability of women against COVID-19. We shall also be working with the governments both at local and national level to develop synergies and enhance the impact of the project. Considering that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted the vulnerable the most, it is important to collaborate and take immediate action. The project will be implemented over a period of 15 months.

Objectives (not more than 3 objectives )

Objective 1. Develop a comprehensive Gender Sensitive COVID Response strategy for vulnerable women.
Objective 2. Enhance resilience of women to the impacts of COVID-19 through implementation of a comprehensive recovery strategy (awareness, skill development and advocacy)

Activity plan

The proposed project will be implemented in two phases. The first phase of the project will be the research stage, during which our teams and partners will develop better understanding of how the pandemic has impacted the women globally and then develop gender sensitive response strategies. The second phase will be devoted towards implementing the strategies to improve the status of women.

Phase 1. Research and Development

Formation of a Gender Sensitive COVID Response Consortium: Considering the project will be implemented in multiple countries and ABC international does not have the required human resources in all the locations, we will be forming a consortium to achieve the required project objectives. The following sub activities have been planned to form a Gender Sensitive Covid Response Consortium:

Development of Consortium rules and regulations: Working with other organizations and that too on a large multi-country project can be confusing unless proper rules and regulations are drafted at the very beginning. The consortium rules will facilitate better coordination between the participating organizations.

Clearly defined objectives of forming the consortium
Well defined roles and responsibilities of participating organizations.
Operational systems and procedures to be followed by the participating organisations.
Clear decision making processes for the organisations involved.
Communication related processes to be followed
Details of the consortium’s financial management.

Development of a comprehensive database of women rights based organizations: We will be developing a detailed database of organizations working on gender sensitive activities in different countries. The purpose of developing this database will help in finding the right partners for the consortium.

Inviting members for consortium: We will roll out invitations to organizations in different locations to become a member of the consortium.

Selection of partners of the consortium: We shall be selecting a few organizations and individuals from the database to implement the project in their respective countries. The selection will be done by scoring these organizations against a few parameters (eg. Expertise, experience in women rights campaigning, years of experience, reputation, achievements and rewards etc.).

Training of identified members: Online training of identified partners on conducting vulnerability assessment will be provided. Considering this is a collaborative project all the project partners will be trained on standard procedures of conducting the vulnerability assessment, analysis and documentation. This will ensure that all consortium partners use the same methodologies and protocol.

Conducting Gender Analysis to understand the impacts of COVID-19: Once all the project partners have been trained on the methodologies of the vulnerability assessment and gender analysis, we shall initiate the study.

Secondary Research: Before we start the primary data collection, we shall conduct a secondary research. There already are some global reports that discuss the impacts of COVID -19 on women, these reports will help us to understand the various aspects that have been impacted by Covid-19 and will help us to refine the interview questions etc.

Primary Data Collection:

Conducting interviews with the key informants: We will be conducting interviews he following be key informants for conducting the interviews:

Women living in hazardous areas or conditions
Women who are inadequately housed
Women who are sole household providers
Highly vulnerable women (elderly, widows, poor, disabled women, abused, illiterate
Women vendors
Rural women or women living in isolated areas
Urban women
Women leaders or authorities

Collecting vulnerability information: along with conducting interviews with individuals we shall also be conducting vulnerability assessments using the following tools:

Life History
Group interviews
Photo essays
Surveys

Development of community vulnerability template: All the information collected during the survey will be analysed and compiled in the form of women vulnerability templates. The vulnerability will look like the template below:

Global Workshop on impact of COVID-19 on women: The results of the first phase of the project will be shared in a global workshop. The consortium partners will share the case studies from their respective countries to an international audience. This global workshop will also help in working on a gender inclusive covid response strategy. The strategy will be implemented during the second phase of the project.

Phase 2: Enhancing Women’s Resilience to COVID-19 impacts

During the second phase of the project, our consortium partners will be implementing the suggested response and recovery efforts in their respective project sites. We shall be implementing a comprehensive package to enhance women’s resilience to impacts of COVID-19. The following set of activities have been proposed:

Policy Advocacy: Advocacy will be an important aspect of the project as it will help in influencing the opinions and decisions of people and organisations regarding women empowerment and reducing the impacts of COVID-19 on them. For the advocacy campaigns we will be engaging with like-minded organizations and will conduct meetings with parliamentarians, politicians, senior government officials and public servants, private sector leaders and will take their help to influence policy makers in making necessary changes in existing policy and regulation to develop a sensitive social response strategy to cope with the COVID challenges.

Awareness on essential rights: The pandemic gave rise to what is referred to as “Shadow Pandemic” i.e. the increased incidence of GBV across the globe. Recent data reveals that there has been an increase in calls to domestic violence helplines in many countries since the outbreak of COVID-19. Most survivors are not aware about their rights and in order to make the victims aware about their rights, we will be conducting both an online and offline awareness campaign. Miscellaneous awareness activities:

Radio or television talk-shows
Special newspaper supplements.
Televised debates.
Along with awareness campaigns in individual regions, we shall rally support and initiate a worldwide campaign to end violence against women and bring together the efforts of local, national and international organizations.

Socio-Economic Development: To support women and empower them, we shall provide a socio-economic response support package. The consortium partners will engage with the local administration to provide support to the most vulnerable women. The consortium members shall discuss with the administration to broaden the provisions of social services being currently provided to women. The following activities will be carried out to support the women: