Working together in India to prevent COVID-19 with rapid and scalable initiatives

The advent of COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a public health crisis of greatest magnitude. The Government of Odisha (GoO), India is responding to this unprecedented development with all its might. In these trying times, UNICEF, as a part of its global COVID-19 response, is supporting the GoO in responding to the crisis. This includes support on behaviour change communication, designing and implementing programs to enhance community resilience to COVID-19, facilitating procurement of essential state and UNICEF project-specific supplies, etc. UNICEF is well-positioned to deliver impact because

(1) its brand has the ability to successfully advocate for anti-COVID policy changes,

(2) it has already mobilized a host of local CSOs, across 21 of 30 districts of Odisha, who would act as implementation partners of UNICEF programs.

The evolving scenario presents dynamic challenges that call for collaborated efforts between government departments, UNICEF, and private sector. Collaboration between the government, private sector and donor agency will lead to:

• Convergence of Government, UNICEF and Private sector COVID19 response to help achieve maximum impact
• Faster and scalable COVID19 reach due to more availability of funds and resources (manpower)
• Brings together expertise from government, donor agency and private sector to deliver workable solutions on the ground
• Take private sector support to seamlessly supply emergency products and services for COVI19 response

CFAR and RTI are the implementing partner of the Water for Women (WFW) Fund project in India. As a part of this project, the RTI-created WaSH Hub platform is working at convergence of public, private and community stakeholders to foster collaboration and accelerate the urban poor’s access to WaSH goods, services. The project is currently being implemented in urban slums of Bhubaneshwar and Jaipur to address unmet WaSH needs at households, community, and city level.

WFW Fund is declared as one of the COVID19 response program by DFAT. WFW advised its partners to work closely with entities like UNICEF and World Bank to aid their efforts in responding to this unprecedented situation. Against this background, RTI had expressed interest to partner with UNICEF India in garnering private sector participation to tackle the current crisis and facilitate fast recovery in Odisha. UNICEF had internal discussions and green signal was provided to discuss the areas of collaboration with RTI.

RTI had been in dialogue with UNICEF to demonstrate the value proposition of “The WaSH Hub”. Correspondingly, RTI believes collaborating with UNICEF in the state not only reflects global collaboration between DFAT/WFW¹ and UNICEF, but also facilitates scale-up of the Hub in Odisha.

See CFARs latest newsletter on the COVID-19 response attached below.

Pictured: Social distancing measures in place

Attachments

• COVID-19 Response Newsletter