Village Aid COVID-19 Emergency Appeal

Village Aid is urgently seeking funding for our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Emergency Response. Our local partners are responding on the ground in West Africa to provide essential support and expertise to the vulnerable communities we work with in Cameroon, The Gambia, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal.

With your support, we can help to prepare and support these communities to get through this crisis over the coming weeks and months.

What makes poor communities in developing nations so vulnerable to Coronavirus?

  • Weak national healthcare systems
  • Poor access to basic hygiene facilities including clean water and soap
  • Densely populated communities, often making social distancing impossible
  • A higher prevalence of HIV and tuberculosis which weaken the body’s immune response
  • A lack of economic resilience, including personal savings to fall back on in times of crisis
  • An absence of welfare benefits to support communities through lockdown periods.

Village Aid is seeking urgent funding to support:

Engaging communities
Advocating for the most vulnerable
Building back better

 

Key Activities

The following are examples of key activities we plan to carry out in five countries (Cameroon, The Gambia, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal) as part of our emergency response:

  • Continuing to provide access to water, including fair access among communities living in conflict.
  • Distributing water storage tanks and hygiene kits (buckets, soap and cleaning materials) as well as food parcels, meals and seeds for families.
  • Providing handwashing demonstrations to community groups.
  • Sharing national government and World Health Organization messaging on handwashing and social distancing through community health services, radio and existing project Whatsapp groups.
  • Promoting handwashing messages via radio through a song by Nigerian artist and musician, Sunny Neji.
  • Addressing stigma and rejection of people infected with COVID-19.
  • Supporting smallholder farmers, particularly women, to re-establish their livelihoods and incomes following the crisis.
  • Advocating for government transparency on COVID-19 budget spending, and an upscaling of risk-reduction infrastructure (such as rainwater storage systems) following the crisis.
  • Leading debates via social media and radio phone-ins to promote COVID-19 awareness, discuss prevention and address rumours and fake news.

Your support will be vital in slowing the spread of the virus and supporting incredibly vulnerable communities through this crisis, if you can help in any way please donate here

Thank you