Awareness With Human Action – AHA

Awareness with Human Action AHA! is an eighteen-month project funded by the European Union and implemented in a consortium of partners, including: The Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers/ Finn Church Aid, World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD). In Sri Lanka the project is implemented by Sarvodaya Movement. The project began in July 2020 and continues for a period of eighteen months and seeks to contribute to the response efforts of the COVID-19 pandemic by preventing conflict and building social cohesion in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and broader South Asia. Through a collaborative approach, the project will increase outreach for initiatives that promote awareness of COVID-19 and constructive narratives that reduce discrimination, hate speech, and stigmatization against specific communities, primarily targeting religious leaders, women, and youth leaders as community influencers. The project is aligned with the EU's global response to COVID-19, by mitigating the social impact of the pandemic, and has a strong focus on inclusion and gender that will contribute to the positive Gender based outcomes of Sarvodaya and the partners.

Baseline survey

During the first phase of the project (July 2020), a baseline survey was conducted along with a gender analysis. Online surveys and key informant interviews had been utilized to gather data. The baseline assessed gendered attitudes, perceptions, and needs. Along with the availability of resources, key stakeholders including community leaders, influencers including women and young people, local networks, CSOs, local authorities, health professionals, and media personnel were consulted. A gender analysis was also conducted to understand the context-specific gender roles, access to and control over resources as well as the differentiated needs of women, men, girls, and boys that could present challenges and opportunities. The data collected for this study indicates that the pandemic had an alarming impact on the social status and wellbeing of the ethnic and religious minorities in Sri Lanka who often live close to each other in over-crowded towns, and housing conditions, where maintaining physical distancing had been a constant challenge. The said factors furnished opportunities for better in-country consultations between community level organisations, health, media professionals as well as social activists, youth and women groups engaged in peacebuilding initiatives and pandemic response and recovery that provided guidance on the direction of the project, especially on national level advocacy.

Figure 16, Gendered impact of the pandemic: AHA Project

Sarvodaya AHA team participated in a total of three regional and led two country level learning exchanges in Sri Lanka to discuss the COVID-19 response considering hate speech, intergroup tensions including scapegoating, inclusion, and conflict prevention in the light of roles and responsibilities of youth, women, religious leaders as change agents. The first regional session was focused on informing about the project and the online campaign with expert speakers. The in-country exchanges focused on the sociological impact of the pandemic and role of Youth in pandemic thsituations, that were held on 11 thNovember 2020 and 12 February 2021 via zoom. The use of virtual townhall learning exchanges invited and engaged participants across South Asia and representatives from the international community, peacebuilding practitioners and peacemakers across the targeted countries to share their experiences and expertise.

In-country community mobilization and implementation of selected initiatives

In December 2020, a total of fifteen small grants, (ten individual and five organisations wide) were disbursed based on an open call and an independent evaluation. These small grant projects had been targeted at innovative, community engaged, technology-based solutions to address, contributing to the response efforts of the COVID-19 pandemic by preventing conflict and building social cohesion. This included youth, youth led, and women led organisations, working on gender transformative solutions to address multiple impacts of the pandemic.