Coronavirus Disease 2019
Project Information
Project Status: Active
Start Date: Feb 2020
End Date: Legacy
Countries: All Countries
Artistic depiction of Coronavirus (Image: Google Images)
Responding to COVID-19 globally with hope & healing
World Hope is committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of the vulnerable communities we serve around the world as well as of our staff.
WHI tackles the prevention and control of major disease outbreaks – historically responding to disasters in order to prevent the outbreak of cholera; being first responders to the Ebola outbreak, and working within communities using social behavior change communication strategies to manage and mitigate disease outbreaks in the aftermath. It has also included not only initial action but also addressing the often devastating economic and psychological impact in the aftermath for years to come.
Project Goal
To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic globally by pivoting scopes of work and current projects and by strategically adopting new projects that empower, protect, and build resilience during this time.
WHI Commitment to our Staff, Volunteers, and Communities Served
We are committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of our staff as well as the vulnerable communities we serve. As such, on March 12, 2020, we issued company guidance that
- Suspends employee business travel to or through mainland China, Iran, South Korea, Italy, Japan, and Hong Kong.
- Recommends individual discretion and monitoring of CDC travel notices for any travel to regions outside of mainland China, Iran, South Korea, Italy, Japan, and Hong Kong.
- Ensures that volunteer teams who are traveling with WHI are aware and coached on WHO travel guidance and that we are monitoring all volunteer trips to ensure that team members are not being put in a place of unnecessary risk.
- Requires any travelers returning from business or who have traveled to mainland China, Iran, South Korea, Italy, Japan, or Hong Kong in the last 15 days to work remotely for a period of 16 days from their date of return and, due to the rapidly changing environment, if staff have visited or live in any future exposure location, to self-quarantine at home and notify the WHI office.
Sanitation Saves Lives
What can you do to help?
- Wash your hands frequently, get between the fingers, and for at least 20 seconds at a time
- Avoid touching your face
- Share these public safety announcements on social media & spread the word, not the illness
Get Support
- Register your organization for free
- Custom, automated, digital space where members of your community can safely help those being impacted by quarantines
- Members of registered communities can request or respond to needs for food, errands, and more
Training Series
- FREE, 10-module video series addressing COVID-19 for caregivers and practitioners of children in residential shelters and group homes.
- 20 minutes to complete in total and go through the videos at your own pace
- English, with 10 different, global subject matter experts
CLEAN WATER & ENERGY
- Well Rehabilitation: World Hope International is working to rehabilitate broken down and dysfunctional wells in Liberia during COVID-19 to help communities have safe and reliable access to clean water for sanitation, hygiene, and well-being. The wells not only are being repaired, but hand washing stations with soap are being set up at each well in order to further limit the spread of COVID-19. As of June 2020, WHI has completed 15 well rehabilitations and is actively working on 15 more.
- Piped Water: With water considered an essential service in Cambodia, the TapEffect team pressed on laying over miles of pipe under COVID restrictions to bring clean water to a new community – including four healthcare facilities.
GLOBAL HEALTH
- Enable the Children (ETC): As countries work to follow health guidelines, we are seeing unintended consequences on supply chains all over the world. This is affecting access to basic food items. As a program under World Hope that provides therapy to children living with disabilities in Sierra Leone, as well as support to their families, ETC was able to adapt services to respond to the crisis. In addition to helping families understand how to manage during quarantine and understand the virus, World Hope also provided 185 ETC families with much-needed food supplies during this difficult time.
PROTECTION
- World Bank/IFC Grant Project: World Hope applied for and received a grant from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to leverage the demand on sanitation supplies by equiping girls with income generating soap-making skills along with hygiene and protection best practices.
- Child Sponsorship: Read this document to see how children in our sponsorship program and their families are faring and what World Hope is doing in the program around the world in response to COVID-19
SOCIAL VENTURES
Solar-Powered Water Farm: WHI finished the water desalination plant that we financed in partnership with the GivePower Foundation. This plant is making 20,000 gallons per day of water using 50 kW of solar power and Tesla Powerwalls, powering a reverse osmosis system and is now providing water to the community. It also provides clean water to the La Gonâve Wesleyan Hospital; which is the only hospital serving 120,000 people on La Gonâve, Haiti.
Ecotourism & Mushroom Farming: Proceeds from World Hope’s social venture, Jahoo, an ecotourism camp run in partnership with the local, indigenous Bunong, as well as Thera Metray, our mushroom farming social venture, both in Cambodia, funded the purchase and distribution of COVID-19 relief. These included sanitation and hygiene supplies, which were distributed by WHI staff along with materials from the Ministry of Health, which our staff helped the communities we partner with to understand and follow.
