Program Respective Initiatives
Democracy and Political Empowerment
Rupantar various project based intervention in response to COVID-19 addressed community needs, transparency, accountability through peoples’ participation.
From raising awareness between community people to stay at home and maintaining social distance to health advisories, Rupantar initiated communication approaches easily accessible to women leaders. Throughout COVID-19, Rupantar collected data from its working area, encouraged union parishad (UP) to activate committee for humanitarian assistance and mobilized committees to form CVID-19 committee and work on corona prevention. Various platforms including women organization named Aparajita and SDG forums continued social awareness raising activities and encouraging people to take safety and security steps. Public service announcement has been one of the effective communication means along with leaflets, pamphlets, posters and brochures. These communication means had informed people about COVID-19 guidelines and national helplines. More than 15,000 stakeholders acted as the prime information hub to disseminate various awareness messages.
Peace and Tolerance
Initially when the whole world identified the rise of COVID-19 as health hazard, Rupantar identified that too much false and misleading information shared in digital platform causing Infodemic-meaning false and misleading information. The rumors, propaganda, hate speech spread across media along through individual physical presence. The community actors mobilized community with authentic sources of information to avoid confusing and unintended social crisis resulting from media speculation. The youth change agents from the community were involved in responding to the social need by providing hygiene support to 20,000 families. Later the change agents prepared developed sanitization centers at their own community with their own effort that resulted in bringing a social behavior change in maintaining the health advises. These community activities conducted by youth group during COVID-19 were adapted through virtual method. The youth actors from the community and universities also worked to monitor the trend of the Infodemic and hate speech to understand the cause and developed positive and alternative narrative.
Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation
Rupantar various project based intervention in response to COVID-19 addressed community needs, transparency, accountability through peoples’ participation. Rupantar’s intervention focused on awareness raising and supplying necessary hardware support for preventing the spread of COVID-19 virus in respective areas. 46 hand-washing devices has been installed at different points including UNO office and upazila health complex. Hygiene materials have been distributed among 750 households at village level. Awareness materials have been distributed and message disseminated through the support of local cable network and print media.
Children and Youth Rights
Rupantar focused on maintaining child sensitive approaches during COVID-19 to children who remained at the most vulnerable stage. The children faced a new dimension when their educational institutions remained closed for indefinite time. The children remained inside their house restricted to go out to avoid social crowd. Rupantar’s intervention focused on ensuring child sensitive space at their home and other areas. As cross cutting issues, parents were motivated and sensitized. To ensure positive mental upbringing and nourishment of the children, Rupantar all interventions involved child responsive.
Media and Folk Theatre
As part of COVID-19 response there has been remarkable stories using Rupantar method of development communication. Rupantar’s has promoted awareness through publishing content digital platforms through public service announcement process. 27 different issue-based contents have been developed and disseminated on different online mediums for mass awareness covering 500,000 community people.