The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic came with unimaginable hardship and death toll across the globe. Like a sudden and unexpected disaster, it caught people unawares as the government had no option but to declare a total lock down in order to contain the spread of the virus. The consequences are grave in all aspects because people could no longer go to work, places of worship and business, visit family/friends and so on. The situation led to loss of jobs, frustration, hunger, loneliness, hopelessness and uncertainty about the future.
Salvaging this situation requires collective responsibility. Leveraging the engagement of our seventy COFP Fellows across the nation for COVID 19 challenge remains one of the most strategic ways to respond to the situation positively. Thus, with support from GHR Foundation, we launched two main COVID 19 interventions namely, nationwide sensitization on the dangers of the pandemic and the importance of adhering to the COVID-19 safety guidelines in order to curb the spread of the virus. We also used this avenue to give messages of hope and encouragement using our religious texts because a lot of people were already traumatized, afraid and were losing faith even in God. This intervention was carried out via radio and television jingles and social media platforms and further provided us with the opportunity of emphasizing on domestic violence, rape, abuse, discrimination, banditry and killings which were rampant in different communities at the time.
Our second intervention focused on providing food palliative support and Personnel Protective Equipment (PPE) materials to over 76,500 vulnerable families including people living with disabilities, women and children across the country. Our collaboration with our 70 local actors called COFP Alumni Network of Peacebuilders (CANEP) enabled us to reach at least 77 million across the nation in our COVID-19 response. CANEP is made up of trained community and stakeholders peace actors (COFP Fellows) from multi-religious and ethnic backgrounds in Nigeria. Together with CANEP, we used radio, TV and social media to dispel fear and misinformation, spread healthy practices and build faith in the midst of COVID-19 disaster.
