Despite the limitations and restrictions of the pandemic, many projects, systems, and centers involving IDS have made great progress in collaborative studies over the past year. Two projects in particular, Covid Collective and Pandemic Preparedness Project, highlighted a successful and agile partnership in action.
With 56 projects and 28 spouses in 34 countries, the Covid Collective is a platform that provides immediate social science studies for decision-making on the urgent maximum progression issues emerging from the pandemic. Coordinated through IDS, the platform brings together the expertise of spouse organizations and budget and commission studies, either on existing responses and to meet new desires stemming from Covid-19.
Covid Collective’s online page offers a multitude of online events, blogs, briefings, reports and thematic projects that reflect the wonderful diversity of effects generated over the past year and the power of true learning and engagement.
The findings of these studies shed light on how the effects and responses of the pandemic have affected communities from Brazil to the Philippines, and the inequalities that prevent many others from meeting fundamental needs, such as good physical care and vaccinations, social protection, decent. paints and nutritious food. food.
Since the beginning of 2020, the pandemic preparedness assignment has reoriented much of its fieldwork and studies on Covid-19. Work is underway at the local point to read about “preparation from below” in Sierra Leone and Uganda, through the collection. of oral histories, participatory studies, and ethnographic fieldwork to track how other people recently perceive and handle fitness events and threats.
The task was set in 2019 following the devastating Ebola outbreak in Africa in 2014 and 2015. In addition to running locally with communities, IDS and study partners from Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda and France are interviewing global, regional and national actors to give clues. how ideas, frameworks, and assumptions about fitness and disease circulate, up and down.
After pre-tracking considerations on disease preparedness before the onset of Covid-19, the task of finding access issues and connection pathways that can and help the legitimacy and firmness of communities’ own preparedness for long-term outbreaks is now being executed.
A primary effect of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the effect of social and political restrictions on civic activism. In another successful partnership, the A4EA workflow assignment Navigating Civic Space in Times of Covid tested the effects of the pandemic on the already waning civic area in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan. All 3 countries have legacies of conflict, military rule, and authoritarianism.
Between June and December 2020, the task investigated parallel trends of repression of democracy and governance under the guise of Covid-19 restrictions and increased grassroots mobilization for network solidarity and accountability.
Research partners in the three countries established panels of civil society leaders to stick to the events and feed into a synthesis report and country case studies. countries studied and beyond.
Many IDS projects during the year owed their good fortune to the dynamism of collaboration between partners. Deep and contextual wisdom and experience were combined from diverse voices and perspectives, allowing for methodological adaptation and innovation, and gaining significantly through the complementarity of interdisciplinarity. Approaches.