Community Activism during Crisis – in person trainings

In person sessions (20) were conducted to empower activists and leaders to prepare them for future unprecedented challenges. After the completion of online dialogue sessions, in-person dialogue sessions were conducted in all ten project locations on the current situation of the country, their duty as community activists and preparedness for a better tomorrow. More than 90% of the participants who took part in the online dialogues joined these in person dialogues. A total of 20 face-to-face dialogue sessions were conducted under two phases. The two phases of the inperson dialogue sessions were divided as follows.

Phase

First Phase

Second Phase

No. of sessions

10 sessions (1 per district)

10 sessions (1 per district)

The following chart presents the numeric details of the participants of two phases of face-face dialogue sessions.

Face-to-face Dialogues Gender Ethnic Representatives Religious Representatives

Male Female Sinhalese T amil Muslim Buddhist Hindu Islamic Christians

st01 Phase 189 124 217 42 54 186 38 54 35

nd02 Phase 182 129 230 38 43 207 35 43 26

Table 10, two phases of in-person dialogue sessions on community leadership

T otal

313

311

In the first phase of the in-person dialogue series, medical professionals were selected as resource personnel to educate the participants on the preventive measures required for COVID-19, and these resource persons conducted their informative sessions emphasizing the requirement of adapting to the new normal. A Q&A discussion provided ample opportunity for the participants to clarify their challenges and to find possible solutions. The second phase inperson dialogue series were conducted successfully despite the challenging environment caused by the second wave of COVID-19 outbreak in Sri Lanka. During this phase, the ongoing situation of each district was discussed, and a productive discussion was held to evaluate the previous project activities. After these discussions, the District Leaders' Committees identified several required services in relation to the discussions held earlier. Due to the upsurge of the second wave, participants who indented to implement unfunded follow-up activities in each project district considered the most pertinent responses to the crisis.

l The participants from each project location created four documents with the support of resource personnel on diverse religious teachings and on how to face and act in times of crisis. This document was printed and shared with the public to educate them on the same. [August – September 2020]

l Created a short film on the values of religions and their relevance in times of crisis [August 2020 in Anuradhapura

Even after the completion of the online and face-to-face dialogue sessions, participants have decided to continue their support in raising funds by themselves to continue their activism and community engagements.