When the pandemic first began in the spring of 2020, few of us realized the scale it would reach or how long it would last. At first it seemed to make sense to put things on hold for a little while, but when weeks turned into months, we knew we needed to figure out how to continue with our work, and most importantly, how to do that safely.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a huge toll on the people of Nicaragua as it has on people all across the globe, and it’s now more important than ever that we’re able to offer the women we work with tools that can enable them to better manage their finances and have access to a safety net.
The health and safety of our staff as well as that of the women we work with is of the utmost importance to us, and so there are a number of measures we’ve put into place to avoid contributing to the spread of the virus:
A hand washing station for the community savings group in Siares.
We hold our community savings group meetings outside, when possible.
We provide hand sanitizer, a hand washing station and encourage social distancing during meetings.
We provide masks to the women in the group and require that they be worn during meetings. -- We hired the women’s collective Cosetu to make the masks, which we then distributed among our group members.
We require that everyone wears a mask during meetings.
We’ve hired a driver to transport our workshop coordinators to the different communities to avoid public transportation.
Our workshop coordinators are regularly tested for COVID-19.
We’re in the process of piloting a program where meetings can be run via video chat using tablets to cut down on in-person visits.
We have continually been amazed at the resilience of our community savings groups, which first weathered political unrest in Nicaragua and now a pandemic. The commitment of the women we work with is incredible, and so we remain committed to continuing our programming with them in as safe a way as possible.