 RCC coordination mechanisms must proactively engage with the operational clusters or the equivalent coordination mechanisms. A lessons learned is that the best people to engage communities are those who have existing trusted relationships. So this is vital in ending disease outbreaks and it underpins all our RCC efforts. So in this regard, and again, I would also like to stress what you mentioned William in the opening remarks. It's important to have those trusted local organizations with common cultural linguistic and historical knowledge because those are the best place to engage communities. Also, those local organizations should have access to RCC coordination mechanisms and to the technical information that they need to engage communities around COVID-19. And an example will be provided during this session on what happened in the West Africa region in this regard. So in thirdly, but not lastly, affected communities, they do not distinguish between RCC or accountability to affected people or community engagement. So neither should we do. So strong partnerships or ideally integration within existing AP or community engagement working groups or the equivalent coordination mechanisms, this will be key to unlock the potential benefits of collaboration between these complimentary people centered approaches. And later on Pilar and Diana will share an example from the Americas regions or region in that regard. So I think it's important to dive into the more concrete examples after having set the scene a bit on what it is and why it is important and specifically in our interagency context. So with this short introduction to RCCE, let me introduce Mathieu LaRuelle. Mathieu is advisor on risk education at the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining. So Mathieu, over to you to present the main findings of the research on new methodologies and new technologies for risk education in challenging context. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mechtold. Sorry, I was looking for the mic. Good morning, afternoon, good evening, everyone. Let me start with a question. What is explosive ordinance risk education or what we call E or RE? To strengthen what William said in his inspiring opening remarks, it is first and foremost a right. And by this I mean that all communities living in explosive ordinance contaminated areas have the rights to be informed about the risk in their environments and to know how to protect themselves and their families from that risk. Today I will provide some examples of a review that we conducted. But risk education, first of all, I wanted to clarify is one of the five pillars of mine action that aims at reducing death and injuries from explosive ordinance by raising awareness of affected communities based on their vulnerabilities, needs and roles, and also by promoting behavioral change. And digital tools offer new possibilities to answer to the needs of communities affected by explosive hazards. I'm part of a team of two working at the Geneva International Center for Humanity Demining based in Geneva, working on risk education. The GSHD is an active member of the mine action area responsibility leading on information management but also supporting work on risk education, technical problem there. Today I will share some key takeaways of a review on technologies and methodologies for explosive ordinance risk education that we conducted this year. The review is available online at the website that you see on the slides and it includes a dedicated resource library where you can filter specifically for resources related to technologies. We're also planning to organize a virtual side event later or a virtual workshop later this year to discuss and build on findings with different sectors. This research was conducted on behalf of what is called the ERE advisory group. It is a group of over a dozen organizations, international NGOs, but also UN agencies including UNMAS, UNDP, UNHCR, IOM that got together in 2019, concerned about the sharp increase of explosive ordinance victims globally. It is chaired by UNICEF and an other rotating NGO, currently Mines Advisory Group. And it reports regularly to the MAOR. The objective of that group is to help revert the upward trend in explosive ordinance victims and provide guidance to risk education practitioners globally. Now, as William mentioned in his opening, the COVID-19 pandemic, I mean, it started during our research and it undeniably accelerated an already growing interest in digital initiatives to deliver risk education, especially in hard to reach areas. It also served as a catalyst to improve coordination efforts with the protection, public health, behavior change and the RCC sectors. And in fact, there are numerous examples of risk education programs already present in communities that have developed integrated COVID-19 and ERE materials and messaging. And this event is really an opportunity to learn even more from each other and grow. So we have found through our research that there are generally five broad categories of technologies being used for risk education to date with varying degrees, social media and digital communication platforms, digital apps, augmenting that virtual reality, the risk education talking device and various mobile data collection tools. Social media campaigns through Facebook, WhatsApp or YouTube are the most commonly used to reach and share information with massive number of people, generally in a one-way communication channel. They have however the advantage of reaching people directly where they are. One interesting examples that you see on the top, on the bottom left of the screen is the use of Facebook ads by Minds Advisory Group. Through an alliance with the Department of States, the Iraqi directorate for Mind Action and Facebook, MAG used Facebook's advertising tools as part of a broader risk education campaign to deliver live-saving messages to almost one million Iraqis in a very specific region where people were returning after heavy fighting. It was generally reported through our interviews that social media platforms represent an easily scalable and also cost-effective way of reaching large group of people, as I said, especially young people, and where security, geography, or complex operating environments limit the delivery of face-to-face activities. Another positive element is that most tools can be easily updated to adapt to changing circumstances, which is key for environments in flux or that change rapidly. The research also shows that digital campaigns seems to be most effective when a wide variety of tools or channels or platforms are combined using an entertainment approach, for instance, with different graphics, visuals, videos, interacting with tools such as games and quizzes. Digital apps have also been increasingly used to deliver live-saving messages, but also to train specific target groups like teachers in Syria. Augmented reality, virtual reality, or what we call extended reality generally, also feels in full expansion that can contribute to enhancing in our field knowledge retention and generate behavior change. But this said, sorry, we're also reminded through the research that innovation does not just mean the latest technology or the greatest technology. Being innovative is also about rethinking, re-evaluating our practices like was said also at the beginning and putting back communities at the center in light of the changing context, but also developing context-specific low-tech responses that I know some of my colleagues were present after. So for instance, sending mass communications through SMS is still often the most preferred channel of communication with software is allowing two-way communication. Pre-recorded audio messages are also used to reach at risk communities via SMS on microcards in public transport, through loudspeakers or radio station. And you have one example on the top, on the bottom right of this slide, which is called the risk education talking device. It's a device that was developed by Unmas in South Sudan. It's solar powered and it allows to upload pre-recorded messages, songs, dramas, interviews, podcasts, et cetera, you name it. For audiences with no too low connectivity, low literacy levels or oral traditions, and it could be used for any other thematic. Now practitioners, we interviewed for this review, highlighted the importance of upholding certain key principles at the moment of conceptualizing digital tools. One key principles refer to something that William alluded to, and it's the need to develop digital responses that are also rooted in a robust context analysis. The context analysis that should inform who's at risk, the tailoring of the messages, the selection of communication vehicles, including the relevance of digital tools. And this needs analysis should also be gender diversity and disability sensitive, looking at impairment, looking at age, language, literacy, displacement status, migration status, socioeconomic status, rural versus urban locations, but also looking at gender norms or what is expected from girls, boys, men and women in specific context. And finally security elements, such as the sensitivity of the information, restriction or certain digital tools and access to the internet and smartphones. And the same level of ideas, the risk education sector is now increasingly developing interventions that are rooted in behavior change approaches, where time is really dedicated to listening, to sharing with communities and analyzing behavioral drivers. Not analyzing or taking these factors into account will limit the effectiveness of risk communication and the digital tools used. Another key building block that William also mentioned in the beginning is that was highlighted in this review is the role of trust. Digital tools works best when the organization has a relationship with the communities where mutual trust and understanding have already been established. Some respondents in our review emphasized that the success of their social media campaign was mainly due or largely due to their long presence in the country. Their links and the trust built with the communities through the focal points, leaders, et cetera. And in that same vein, many also emphasize that digital campaigns should generally compliment and not substitute other risk education activities including at face-to-face level. We've also noticed two additional common factors between actors that have successfully developed digital projects. And the first one is that they have adopted an internal culture of innovation and shown willingness to work across organizations, across sectors, across national boundaries on challenges of mutual concern. The other one is partnerships. So these organizations have created strong partnerships by bringing together people from other sectors to capitalize on their expertise, their know-how to test information and the information and communication technology, local technology companies, big tech innovation labs, marketing companies, et cetera. The Safe Steps project in Colombia illustrates this or Paso Seguros. It's an alliance between the US International Development Agency, the Barco Foundation, Discovery Communications and a government entity that focuses on bridging the digital divide between rural and urban areas. This project uses multiple digital platforms and tools to respond to the needs and questions of different audiences through VR games, TV series, online trainings, et cetera. Now to conclude, I'd just like to highlight the fact that this review has shown that the risk education sector is only beginning to explore the potential of digital technologies and RCCE. And combined with the RCC, BCC and digital tools combined can only help us deepen our impacts by creating a two-way dialogue with communities at risk by generating meaningful engagement, allowing feedback, integrating people's voices and priorities. And one project brings these elements together. It is evidence-based. It's founded on a strong partnership with the private sector. It uses multiple platforms and it addresses multiple risk factors. And I'm here, I'm pleased to give the floor to the next panelist, André Heller-Pirage, who's the director of the signpost project based at the International Rescue Committee. I'm happy to answer any questions through the chat later and over to you, André. Thank you. Okay, hello, everyone. Thank you for the kind introduction and compelling presentations thus far and especially thanks everyone for attending and spending some of your time with us today. I am the director of the signpost project and I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about that in relation to how we're working with RCC specifically related to COVID. But what I'll do is I think that this will be more useful to the group is tell you a little bit more about the program, how it operates, a little bit about its history, about the tools and the technology that we use and how it is that we deliver and how we're also growing our consortium and we're growing our global footprint. And I'd like to make that known so that others can engage. I'm looking at time and we're a little bit behind so I'm gonna go through the presentation relatively quickly and be happy to answer any outstanding questions should anyone have any when the presentation is over via the chat. So without further ado, next slide please. Okay, RCCE generally poses a lot of challenges in any infectious disease response. There is often a sort of overload of information. It's often very difficult to work in a genuinely cross-sectoral way. There's a lot of efforts put into this but it's just very difficult for our architecture to truly embrace this and do it. There is generally a wealth of risk communication, a wealth of risk communication messaging that exists. But in terms of the links with the community engagement in the time of COVID, the community engagement side is particularly difficult given the public health advice or strict restrictions in our ability to move about and interact with people these days. So the community engagement needs to shift towards digital needs. Reaching people with risk communication is one thing but engaging with communities is something entirely different and very difficult. One of the other pieces related to RCCE in an infectious disease outbreak is that things are evolving very quickly and it's very difficult to assess and evaluate impact and behavior change in real time as things are rapidly evolving. Next slide please. And so, SignPost is a responsive information service that is deployed digitally. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about our history. We, as a project, came into being in 2015 in Greece through a collaboration with Mercy Corps and the IRC where we built a service map, an interactive service map and a moderation platform and an article publication platform in response to the many, many migrants, asylum seekers and refugees who were coming into Greece at the time and looking for orientation. People could largely take care of themselves on some levels but had questions on others. And essentially what we saw was changing information needs over the arc of the crisis and as their situation changed and evolved. There was a lot of complex bureaucratic, heavy, difficult processes for people to engage with on a number of levels. So really truly understanding information and then a language that makes sense and then a parlance that makes sense was what we delivered on. And now this program started in Greece and it grew substantially throughout the entire region into the Balkans and Italy and then beyond. And I'll talk a bit more about the technical aspects in a moment. Next slide, please. So that platform that we created is called Refugee Info and Refugee Info is still going strong today in Italy and Greece. We've handed over to local partners in Macedonia or in Bulgaria. In the Americas we created Quintanos which is a program that was created a number of years ago to help victims of domestic violence and gang violence. So also protection needs but a very different context. And there we adapted a model where we were working more through service providers of different sorts. And the program has expanded from El Salvador to Honduras and Guatemala. We've recently launched Info Parante which is a new platform in Colombia working in partnership with a local responsive information service called Estoy en la Frontera to deliver on information needs for the many vulnerable people and displaced migrants or temporary status people looking for orientation from Venezuela. Next slide, please. You'll note on the previous slide that Refugee Info, Quintanos and Info Parante did not have a Mercy Corps IRC branding but they had local brands. The localization of the brand is really important to us as a program. We want it to speak to the lived context of people rather than to the institution that achieved the funding required to launch the program. We want it to feel right and to look right to people. And we're kind of deliberate about not branding it IRC. We don't brand it signpost either for that matter. We just localize it. We wanna have a more decolonized approach towards the way that we present ourselves. We'd rather present from the community who actually makes up our personnel and our staff and who's really running and leading the program. And so responsive information services in the way that signpost runs them is really comprised of a couple of components. One is a suite of technology which I'll talk about in a sec of the consortium of partners. And those are local, private sector, international and staff that is skilled, trained, reflecting, affected communities, all applying evidence-based methodologies that we've researched and published about that really are the lifeblood of the program. So the technology tools that we use while they all look, while they're all actually extremely complex, we work with companies like Google and Zendesk and Twilio and Box and TripAdvisor and they've helped us put together a suite of technology tools and using a lot of pre-existing tools that are already powering private sector to deliver in a way that just feels natural to people. So for the most part, we meet people on platforms that they already use in the languages that they already speak through translation software and through having staff to help out with that. And we have a quite complex backend that we help sort of pipe through the different communication channels to power websites in multiple languages and to deploy web-based content via WhatsApp and things like this, using certain products. So the experience feels perfectly normal and natural and low-tech or just using existing platforms, but in reality, there's a lot behind it. So our partnerships is a real key component of the work that we do. We partner with big technology companies, but we also always have a network of local partners to play various components of our programming, whether it is referral pathways for protection cases, whether it is a service mapping, a local actor or if it's a group of people who engage with communities to support us in moderation. And we work with a team always on the ground and sometimes local partners will play one of the team roles. And so essentially the components of the program are moderators, editorial content producers and service mappers. The moderators will have engagement with people, sort of back and forth communications about questions. They will help orient people towards the services that they need. And the editorial supervisors will use this iterative process, this back and forth communication to understand and we quantify and sort of track what questions are, to understand them better, to have our content evolve over time and have the information products that we create reflect the information needs in a population. And we publish those of course in the most simple client facing possible language, visual communication tools and so on so that it actually is understandable by those people and actually really speaks to their lived reality. One of the things that we find is general information often counts as not applicable if it doesn't actually speak to your lived reality and how to apply that in your context. Next slide please and on this slide if you can just click through quickly. So this charts user engagement on Facebook in refugee info over the course of the quarantine in Italy. We've reached a total of two million people in the program so far. And one of the things that's most important to us is to measure trust in a population. And in our most recent user surveys, we had 88% trust of the users that we have. While trust is not a proxy for behavior change, it is a key component to help getting the right messages there to enable it. Next slide please. Signpost project is in the process of scaling. We currently work in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Italy and Greece and Columbia. But we're soon scaling in Pakistan, Mexico, Bangladesh, Kenya, Iraq and Niger. And we hope that this process continues. It is our mission at Signpost to deliver on information of the human right. And we have a broad interpretation of this human right. We believe that information is aid and information is power. And we wanna work in partnership and in consortium with other international actors as well as local actors, as well as embracing all of the best in class technology of our technology partners. So we hope on that note that you can reach out after this presentation and we hope that you can join us. Next slide please. In doing a lot of the work that we have ahead of us, we'll all need to collaborate. And on that note, I am going to introduce our next speaker. And sorry if I went over. Vincent Grillard from UNHCR will now present. Thank you everyone for your time. Thank you. Thank you, André. Very inspiring presentation. Some of us have used a refugee in Greece in previous operations so that was very inspiring. So hello everybody. Let me share a few considerations, reflections and possibly provocations from our region, Western Central Africa region. First of all, a step back. If you don't mind trying to have this correct. I want you to have a look, close the look at this poster in Central Sahara Mali multi bus station for March. Let's get back to March. What do you see? He's sorry, I'm trying to have the presenter of you here. Sorry, here we go. We had to face this type of social and poster content. Somebody somewhere in an office. So it was a good idea to use the side of a pair of skis and a yoga mat in Mali to explain the two matters social distance. And this is my first point. In that at any moment, we aid workers community. We are, we have been and we are potentially every day. Can you hear me? I think your connection is not strong enough to host the video. Vincent, would you kindly turn off your video? Maybe that'll improve the sound. Thank you. Is it better? Yes, thank you. Okay, sorry for that. The connection is precarious a bit here. So basically the first golden rule one in our COVID experience is to be modest and aware of ourselves and our good intentions. Many things, angles are wrong in this posture. Mobti is a small town of central Sahel with no ski resorts in Francophone Mali. The text is in English mixed with small fragments of French. Yoga may be growing, but not much. So it's a diverse city and region with a bozos pearl, Bambara, Dogon, populations, languages, Maraca, Tuareg. A lot of IDPs and refugees taking these bus and these people, these voices are not captured into this picture. We only see a couple of men with executive packed suitcases. So of course it's an exhilaration, it's a reality, an extreme administration, but it says something on some of our shortcomings and challenges mentioned by your few colleagues and by William in the introduction. In applying this golden rule number two in our efforts to communicate better with communities, that all messages should be contextualized and adapted to the target community whenever possible. So this is challenging, yes, and time consuming, but worth it. Another, sorry. Another step back in March again, I made especially this meme for you. We all reacted very quickly with one of our favorite much needed tool, SOPs and guidelines. So I hope I will not be sued by Oprah Winfrey, she incarnates here, ourselves, it's part of our regional offices. My point is that many of us in the region, many organizations, colleagues, we felt overwhelmed by the plethora of good guidance notes, handbooks on COVID-19. So many were extremely useful ones, especially RCC guidance notes, but every week we had to decide and to screen a new set of guidance notes to help to disseminate share and we kind of overwhelmed ourselves and community mobilizer. Many were not very adapted to the context and we had to plan something on this front, acknowledge the guidance, but to try to make it real. So basically, as an agency first, we started to draw around, our planning around four guiding principles. First, to acknowledge and remind permanently that the persons we serve are also overwhelmed with information. So the need to use clear and simple language and to adopt multiple challenges of communication, including social media to reach diverse groups was key, but also the quality of the channels, whether digital or analog, had to be there in the sense of consistency, transparency, so that we have an empathetic response and to be able to build this authority and trust that was mentioned earlier on. Other consideration has been key to acknowledge and normalize feelings of confusion, stress. This was a psychological crisis and we had to translate that into interaction. And another part is that we needed to address in a more creative way maybe the concerns and rumors and misinformation. So basically this was the context to launch our intelligency digital library, which is what you see on the screen, this user-friendly simplified website. Context is a creation of the working group, the regional one in March, chaired by UNICEF. We felt it was critical urgent to communicate better on what is known about COVID, what is unknown, what is being known. And we realized two, three people at the beginning, we wanted to go simple, to enhance a bit the do-it-yourself philosophy to be, I would say, pragmatical, embrace digital efforts in close link with analog formats, with also a protection approach. So the rapid decision was to take, we need to focus on art, on imaginaries, on local habits and practices. This means engaging visuals to try to calibrate our audiences. And so basically I want to make this point, it took literally a couple of ideas three, four individuals committed to this, until now $2,000 budget. And we felt it was time to have this central and public space, vis-à-vis the overwhelming context I mentioned in the beginning, and to share the best RCC materials from the region, whether locally produced or adapted in different formats and languages. So today, and in this journey, we screened from five to 10,000 different items, 350 tools. It is a Francophone first and has also 20 other languages, audio, visual, social media content, all free for download. The use is intuitive, search functions, so that the users can find the right tool for their own context and start using it immediately. The social media campaign building on this experience was launched in August. I will let you explore the site by category, we have more than 16 categories by country, by language, and I insist it's been, and then the newsletter, the e-learning and the social media campaign created in-house with staff support from IOM, UNICEF, UNHCR and MSF, agency who sometimes struggle to work closely together in emergency. So a lot of time and effort and creativity has been put into this process. We upload twice a week curated tools and very quickly a few numbers. So it was beyond expectation. We have now around 30,000 unique visitors, 10,000 regular users, 60% female, most from the regions now, 63% return to the platform. In other UNHCR measurement tools we have from a sample of 800 key informants also satisfaction on the COVID information thanks to these tools of 92%. So it proved to be helpful. I will go very quickly on the visuals of the Facebook campaign, et cetera. The branding has been very important. Was a no-logo approach and costs us $500. It's easy to remember and this is why we still have a 74% of direct access to the site and referrals including from social networks are constitute the rest. The targets will be quick on that. Two type of target audiences, of course, community mobilizer from UNNGO's agencies, local NGOs, international NGOs, using mainly the website and the Facebook social network, the different profiles to use the tools and the content on mobile service, WhatsApp trees and other Facebook applications. I'm sorry, my connection is a bit unstable. I see I took a lot of time so I will go to the last considerations. Basically, I will go very quickly. This was to show a bit and to illustrate the fact that the challenge to engage in a cross-sectoral sector is not as simple as it may seem to be multifunctional with a multidisciplinary approach and to build a solid partnership. So what was key is our capacity to listen to each other expertise and to the persons we serve, especially I would say between three types of sapiens, the human rights protection people, the comms people and the tech people. And when we have a truly proper environment based on principles and pragmatism, it may happen. So we have a lot to discuss about this but I will go directly since I lost time with my presentation on key final considerations if you don't mind. Basically, partnership, for some reason we managed to have a genuine transparent, no logo based on values partnership between these big agencies and local CEOs. It's been result oriented and it's a refreshing climate of trust in a very competitive environment. I wanted to stress that. Also pragmatically, we don't need to be a geek, many of us community-based protection people, we are generalists, but we need to know our basics and to take the profit of the digital world and the analog engagement that must go together. The need to address specific needs based on age gender diversity has been stressed already and probably by the next panelist too, but this has been key to tailor and calibrate our messaging and also the feedback from the persons we serve. Obviously, the communication issues have been keys in terms of language, imaginary access to mobile technology, but my point is that these are a lot of protection issues involved and not only comes and this has been, I would say, one of the difficulties to have a consensus and I joined the introduction of William in this sense. There's still much more to be done, we still need to do much better than that. It's been very complicated to present in such a short period of time, but the key in our work, interagency and as an agency has been to listen, to listen and to listen, do we do it enough? I am not sure. We are engaging on connectivity assessment right now and communication pilot projects to enhance and make the best of it. And we realize that we need much more reliable data on that to go beyond assumptions and in a humble, determined manner. Thank you for your patience and sorry for the connection. The floor now is to Viviane. She's a coordination for East Asia and Pacific for the Federation of the Red Cross. She's a coordinator of community engagement and accountability. And I have to say that Viviane, we have translated the first week of the pandemic, your document that you will present today. So it's by pure chance. So it's an honor to introduce to you the floor is yours. Thank you. Apologies, I just needed to unmute myself for a second because the panel disappeared. Thanks so much for that very kind introduction, Vincent. That's great to hear that has been translated. I'm going to switch off my camera now. I just wanted to switch it on for a second that you know who is talking to you because you've heard already from a lot of amazing people and I will now put my presentation in the full screen mode. Yes, so I work in Asia and the Pacific region as you've just heard. And because we're kind of halfway, we have a poll for you to kind of wake you up a little bit and make sure that you're not just listening but can participate a little bit. Would it be possible to start the poll now, please? Okay, so on your screen, you see a little pop up window and the first question is, are you currently using community data? And with that, I mean anything that could be feedback, perception surveys are similar in your work. And the second question is, how long would you like my presentation to last? Now, don't worry, this is completely anonymous so you can say one minute. I won't be able to say who said that and who doesn't want to hear anything from me. I see one brave person already chose one minute and then two. The majority of you is saying 10 minutes, great. So you have a few more seconds to vote. Right now, only 50% of you have voted. 54%, right? So I give you another couple of seconds to make your choice and tell me it's great to see that a big majority of you has been using community data in your work. So almost 80% and we see that most of you want to have about 10 minutes of presentation. Okay, so having asked you this question, I'm gonna end the polling now because we're running a bit over time and I will share the results with you. So you can see that the majority of you wants me to speak for 10 minutes. I'm starting my timer right now and I might even be a little bit under to also please the 6% but I won't be going over so I'm really sorry for the 18%. So let me ask you, do you feel like you've participated through this question? I've asked you a question, have you participated? Feel free to use the chat box. Not really, no, not properly. Yes, so-so, exactly. Yeah, not really, yes, yes. So there's a little bit of descent, that's great. I love that. So it was a consultation. Yeah, somebody wanted to answer five minutes. So these are really good points, right? So I was the one who decided what your options were to answer this. Now, how would you feel if I would suddenly do a presentation that would last three hours and completely ignore what I've asked you? Then it would be even less valuable to even ask you the question. It would be probably worse than just doing a presentation. So what you chose then is that it's really key for us to not just ask and listen, but also to adapt and act depending on what people tell us. And Crystal is very nicely saying that she would wonder if we could trust or if you could trust me after that. That's absolutely true. So this is, I think, a really nice little exercise to make us feel and a little bit aware of what does it mean if we just go out and we ask some questions where people can only fill in pre-decided answers and we don't act on that and we don't show people that we actually listen to them. So this is one of the key lessons that we found all over again. I'm gonna very briefly go through three key points. One, kind of the building blocks of community engagement and accountability. And I do include risk communication in that, but that is the acronym that we use, CEA. So apologies for that. Why inclusion is very important for good community engagement and accountability and the other way around. And some of the key steps. Because we're short on time, I will run through some of the slides rather quickly, but I will try to still speak clearly and without a lot of acronyms to make it a little bit more accessible and you will get the slides at the end as well and there is a recording, of course. So one of the key points is of course trust and that has been running through all of the presentations of the colleagues today. And how do we build trust? Well, first I would like to invite you to ask people first and then message later. So asking what are the knowledge gaps? Asking what are the concerns, the questions and so on. And sometimes those might hide behind rumors or misinformation. It's really important that we remember that it's not just about us bringing solutions, but that people have solutions. And sometimes we should even dare to bring problems. So we should troubleshoot together with communities to find solutions that suit them, that come from them and that we can support. Feedback is one of the key elements and we've heard a little bit about that today already. It's important that we first engage but also that we document and most importantly that we address and adapt based on that feedback. And we have to show people that we are doing that. We need to be transparent and timely, of course, so that we can gather people's trust. And language is really important. And with that, I don't just mean the language that people are speaking in terms of, I'm a native German speaker, let's say, but also in terms of using familiar words, we are very good at creating our own acronyms and our own humanitarian language. And we need to make sure that our language is inclusive and accessible as well. Now, why is this important? Well, one of the things that we did in the Asia-Pacific region was a survey and one of the findings was that quite a lot of people almost wanted to believe a little or fully that a specific group is responsible for the spread of COVID-19. Now, that is, of course, a huge issue around stigma that we need to address. And the way that we've done that was that we've had kind of a survey form and lots of different languages with a lot of open questions as well. And that was led by WHO, IFRC, National Cross-Wheat Present Societies, Ocha, and UNICEF. And we found out a lot of interesting things that the stigma question was the most interesting, but there was also a question on communication preferences and we found that people use social media a lot, but they actually don't trust it so much. So we need to make sure that we adapt accordingly. There is a dashboard as well that you can access publicly and you can look at the different countries that we have data from. Now, one of the things I wanted to talk about is inclusion and obviously, you know quite a lot about that already, but this is, you know, going back to the first exercise, imagine that you would have any kind of vision impairment or that you wouldn't be a native English speaker or that you might be dyslexic, for instance. Then that poll that I launched, you wouldn't have had a chance to answer probably. So we need to make sure that we don't just listen to the loudest voices, but we actually listen to the ones that are really, you know, to everybody and that we actively reach out to them. One of the things that we've done in the Asia Pacific region as part of the RCCE Working Group has come up with a very short guidance note and I know we're all suffering near death by guidance notes and webinars, but I hope this one is a bit useful. It has, it's very short. It has one update based on the input that we've received and it gives different groups that might be marginalized or vulnerable. This is one example. So persons with disabilities and we say, why are they especially vulnerable? Why do we need to make an extra effort to include them? And then we give some concrete actions to include this group. So for instance, doing active hours speech, using clear and familiar terms, accessible formats, et cetera. So you can go through all of the different groups and see what are some key actions that you can take. In addition to that, we have a matrix that summarizes all the key actions and goes through different groups and links you to further research if you want to get into more detail. So finally, I just want to give you a couple of key takeaways. One is including different groups of different people in different ways. So making sure that we don't just think of the loudest voice, but that we actively find out who are the different vulnerable groups and how can we include them. Asking first, so making sure that we don't just message, but we give content and that answers a little bit the language question that I saw in the chat earlier. If we give content and kind of let go of control a little bit, then people can go ahead and share their content and revise the format. We need to listen as we have heard before and of course trust is absolutely crucial. We have to make sure that people actually understand what we're saying and that it's useful to them and we have to adapt the kind of content that we share. It's important that we don't just have leaders to talk, but that we have also just regular people speak up. So there's a number of resources and you will get the PowerPoint as well. I'd like to highlight the interagency Google Drive with lots of different language content for you to use and adapt and feel free to get in touch as well. I'm now handing over and just to let you know I've asked you how long I should take and in about 20 seconds my timer will go off. So I've kept with the wish of the majority to stay in 10 minutes and now I'm glad to hand over to Pilar Peña and Diana Mendina. Pilar is a lawyer and also a community-based protection officer at UNHCR and Diana is my colleague, a CAE manager at the IFRC in the Americas. Over to you. Thank you very much. Good morning and good afternoon to all of you. Thank you very much for the introduction and for the opportunity to present the regional information and communication needs assessment. This is an interagency tool that helps us to understand the information on the communication needs of refugees and migrants in the context of a Venezuela situation. Sorry, I have a problem. And this assessment was conducted as a joint effort of the regional CWCC for the working group which is part of the regional interagency coordination platform for refugees and migrants of Venezuela and in coordination with the national platforms which is the same structure but at the national level. It was the first regional simultaneous evaluation conducted in this context. We saw that there were different initiatives that were carried out to collect information on the communication needs of refugees and migrants. However, not all of them were conducted in a structured and systematized way in all of the countries. So this gave us the opportunity to have a common baseline to understand what are the information and communication needs of the different population groups. And this assessment helped us to analyze information compared to trends, measure the impact in order to have some feedback that would help us to improve our strategies, interventions and tools in 2020. The regional assessment was conducted in the second semester of 2019. It covered 15 countries across the region, Mexico, some countries in Central America, the South America, and some countries in the Caribbean. More than 3,400 refugees, migrants and post-communities participated in this exercise. It was as mentioned as a joint effort with different actors, including communities, community-based organizations. And the implementation was conducted in several stages. We had four stages, first a desk review. We developed some tools using some global tools that would contextualize to the specific situation of the Venezuela. And we were able to test the tools in Colombia. We had the testing in border areas and in some urban settings. And then we have the stage of the data collection and the analysis and the drafting of the report. Some of the tools that we used in order to collect the data was, sorry, sorry. In order to collect the data, was the main survey questionnaire. There was an individual interviews conducted with the support of enumerators. We had an online self-administered survey where refugees and migrants could directly fill out the information. We had a questionnaire for key informant interviews and some tools to conduct in the focus group discussions. All of this information is available in the r4b.info website in the microsite for the CWC C4B working group. I'm gonna explain quickly some of the key findings that we had with this assessment. We will not go into all of the details, but you can find in the report, this is the segregated data and all of the information for each section. Some of the main findings are that 70% of the people interviewed have access to a mobile phone. 79% of the people interviewed have access to the internet. Only 29% of the people in transit have access to wifi hotspots and only one out of two persons feel important. The main sources of information are WhatsApp, Facebook, and the television. Here in the report you're gonna see some information as mentioned, the segregated for example, in terms of access to communication. We have some information about the use of mobile phones. 70% of the people, as mentioned, have access to a mobile phone and they use it to connect with family and friends to access the information and to look for information. In terms of the accessibility to the internet, 79% have access to the internet. Most of the people had difficulties finding, for example, wifi hotspots and these tell us that there is a need, they have to allocate, for example, their own resources to buy in connectivity and this is very problematic in terms of the current pandemic. In terms of access to TV, radio, and the press, majority of the people do not access this traditional channels. Some of them, they like the devices or the resources, they don't have the resources to buy this devices. In terms of the communication channels, one of the main characteristics of the Venezuelan population is that they are very connected, they're a very connected one and they use social media and messaging apps, for example, as their main channels of communication to keep in touch with the family members, friends, and to access the information. This doesn't mean that there are the most trusted sources of information. At the end of the report, you're gonna see some recommendations, I'm not gonna go over through all of them, but you can see that there is a need to increase community engagement and the participation. There is a need to work in regional or national interagency initiatives, avoiding duplication, having this joint community engagement initiatives is key. There's also a need to invest in digital skills reinforcing the capacities of refugees and migrants, but also the capacities of the different actors working in the response. The advocacy efforts also need to be strengthened in order to access the communication, the connectivity, and many other recommendations that are very useful to continue and reinforce our work and our collective efforts. In terms of the impact of the assessment in the COVID-19 response, we see that this assessment that was published in January 2020 helped us to be better prepared for the needs of the COVID response. It helped us to shape the outreach to refugees and migrants and to strengthen or establish mechanisms that can be used during the COVID-19 response. For example, we started with an interagency repository with prevention and mitigation messages, disseminating it through the preferred channels that persons of refugees and migrants had expressed. We put more efforts in updating, for example, a regional tool that is the regional service mapping that has information about national and local services. We also adapted the information that is shared to, for example, virtual and remote modalities. We have the support spaces, which is a regional initiative, an interagency initiative that provides spaces where refugees and migrants can receive information and orientation on some basic services. We also have interagency initiatives, such as the UReport, that is more focused on communication with adolescents and youth. And we also, it was a good opportunity also to pilot some initiatives, such as the WhatsApp chatbots. As UNHCR, we have our piloting currently one for Mexico and Ecuador with automated responses and human-based interactions. And we also have a very good initiative that was piloted in Peru. I'm not gonna give the floor to my colleague, Diana, so she can present this initiative. Over to you, Diana. Thank you, Pilar. Let me start for giving you some context. In last March, Latin America already emerging as at the epicenter of the pandemic. And on the other hand, Peru was, and it still is, the second country that hosts the largest number of Venezuelan and refugees and migrants. Additionally, many refugees and migrants work in the informant market and have lost their job on the context of the pandemic. We felt that it was necessary to have some mechanism to connect with refugees and migrants as they are one of the more neglected population during the pandemic. And also because of the isolation measure, our volunteers have reduced their intervention on the ground. So we asked ourselves the question of how we can listen and answer to the community if we can be on the ground. Next slide, please. In next slide, please. In March 2020, the IFRC and the Peruvian recross launched the pilot project that consists in a WhatsApp line to provide information, share preventing messages, and soul concern from the community. Considering the study that Pilar already presented, we were some of the main finding were the high connectivity of the refugees and migrants and the overwhelming use of WhatsApp as a communication channel. We decided to use this application to implement the information and feedback mechanism we wanted. The tools allow us to monitor the evolution of the situation in the country and the needs of the community. The line also helps us to establish a communication mechanism to identify rumors and misinformation in a timely manner. Next. It is important to note that although the line focus on migrants and refugees, the general population contact us through the line and of course, they receive assistance and we make referrals if it's necessary. The information we had shared through the line has focused in prevention and self-care messages in terms of COVID, information to correct rumors and answer questions and doubts. Referral to the government established mechanism for people who need testing for COVID, provide advice to people who might present some symptoms and clarify, of course, the symptom. And also information about cash integration program, how to use ATM, the availability of the money in the cart, et cetera, because in April, we had a cash distribution for refugees and migrant population. We have used written messages, graphic, video, audio, messages to disseminate information. These are some of the results until September 20th. More than 28,340 messages have been sent. There are currently more than 1,417 users. 33% of the users are women and the majority are in the Asian range of 18 to 39. And about 47% of the users are refugees and migrants. Next please. The most frequently consulted topics are symptoms, financial assistance, general information, preventing measures for COVID. Most of the interaction are questions and the important detail is that also we receive SMS and the platform also allows us to share information and answer questions via SMS. At the moment, the line is growing and we are starting to cover more topics given that the activities on the ground are being reactivated with livelihood, non-communicable diseases and psychosocial support programs. I wanted to give the floor to my colleague Tiago Sote. He is the associated protection officer with the protection cluster in South Sudan. And he has been the focal point for PC in the national RCE technical working group. Go ahead, Tiago. Tiago, sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Dianna and the afternoon colleagues. Greetings from South Sudan. I'll be presenting some of the RCE activities undertaken by the protection cluster here. I'll just go through my presentation very quickly. I will skip the context of the country. I imagine that most of the people attending do know about the context of South Sudan. I'll bring specifically some information on the digital availability on the access to internet by people in South Sudan. And the first data that the one that pointed out is the internet. So according to the International Telecommunication Union, only 8% of the population in South Sudan has access to internet. And when we are talking about a country around 11 million people, the population, we have just 800,000 people having access to internet. And when we talk about social media, that number drops even more. So we have very, very low number of people having access to internet and for social media. So radio is still one of the main sources of communication. Would you kindly turn off your video? Yes, sure. Thank you so much. Sorry about that. I hope it's better now. So radio still remains one of the main resources of communication in the country. However, although radio is more accessible than internet, we still have many families that don't have access to radio devices as well. And we have been receiving reports from protection partners that many families couldn't follow the educational programs that was being delivered to radio because schools were closed, because many families didn't have access to radio devices. So this is still a challenge as well to provide radio devices for especially deep field areas, deep field communities. And as part of the COVID response in South Sudan, there was establishment of the National COVID Response Plan. And with some pillars, eight pillars were established. And one of the pillars was the risk communication and community engagement technical working group and also state level RCC technical working groups. So the protection cluster has been engaged since the beginning with the RCC in order to ensure that all the masses being produced were inclusive, non-discriminatory, and also that protection masses were included in the overall RCC strategy that was being developed and all the masses that were being developed. So I'll bring here just three examples of some activities that were undertaken by the protection cluster. And one of them was the development of some cartoons. The cartoons were the ski protection and human rights considerations in light of the COVID-19 restrictive measures. It was done in partnership with OSHR, UNHCR, and HDC. That is a national NGO. And the cartoons include 10 cartoons with dues and don'ts. So we tried to do it in a very easy way for the people accessing this information to be able to understand what were the rights that should be preserved during the COVID-19 time. And this was a very innovative way to reach communities with easy to read information, as I mentioned, on this basic rights that should be maintained during this situation. It's important to highlight that we developed these cartoons based on protection risks that we were receiving from protection risks that we were hearing being reported by protection partners in all the areas around the country. I'll quickly show one of these cartoons so you can see. This one is of access to healthcare. So we have the don'ts where people are being discriminated and also there is a fee being charged for people to access the health facility while you're in the due. You have all people being able to access protective measures being followed and assigns saying that the health facility is free access for everyone. And then on the bottom we included the key message about the right that people should know in order to have information and to not see their rights being overturned because of the restrictive measures. A second activity that we undertook was the use of book SMS. So we partnered with two cell phone companies operating in the country to send this book SMS with key protection and human rights messages as well. On this way we were able to reach 1000 and 1000s of people with SMS message. We vowed to need to have access to internet connection. So to overcome this challenge of people not having access to internet, we use the traditional way of book SMS. The three, one is on the right to have once again to ensure that people know that they should have access to health facilities as well without discrimination and being charged any fee. And the other two on the restriction of movement that shouldn't restrict them to access these facilities and also that shouldn't be used as an opportunity to have as you treat or extort people because many reports were done on the protection risk and protection incidents happening in this regard. And the third activity was the use of radio shows. So as radio is one of the main ways of communicating with deep field communities here in South Sudan, we use the radio shows, we use the radios once again as the main way of delivering masses and communicating with communities, especially those in the deep field areas. So the radio shows were also on protection and in human rights considerations. The episodes included topics as child protection, mental health, right to food, about the cataract and intercommunal values that were happening in the country and they hampered response to that amongst many other protection topics. We had around 10 radio talks each week with different people and with different topics. So the episodes had the participation of different heads of UN agencies here in the country, national, international NGOs, and also we had the participation of IDPs. And with the radio shows, we were able to establish actually communication channel with communities because during the radio talk shows, many callers were calling to the radio station to report on some protection concerns that they were facing and also asking advice on some of these human rights and these protection masses that were sharing through the show. So these were the three main ways that we found in overcoming this digital access challenge in the country in order to be able to reach all communities, both in urban and also in deep field areas. There were many other activities, but I'll stop here and you can access the data part of the protection art. There you can access the cartoons and you can access some of the radio shows and the cartoons will be shared also after this event. And I'll stop here and I'll hand over the floor for the closing remarks and this will be done by Christelle Loop Forest. She is the Deputy Global Coordinator of the Mine Action Area of Responsibility with the United Nations Mine Action Service with the Geneva office. Over to you, Christelle. Thank you, can you hear me and see me? We can, thank you. Hi everybody, thank you very, very much for the super interesting session. So I want to thank Rebecca, William, Martel, Matthew, André, Vincent, Viviane, Thiago and Pilar for sharing their experience, the findings of their research and sharing really candidly what they've learned with us. We really truly appreciate this presentation. So my conclusion will start by the way William left us. Information save lives. Indeed, information can save lives and it needs aid programming and funding and professionalization of the way we communicate this information as to deliver on this great potential of saving lives. There are many success factors which have emerged from this presentation. First, data must be accurate. We need to correct rumors and misinformation and provide good data, which means information in investing in information management and data sharing. Two, community engagement and risk communication must be gender diversity and disability inclusive and responsive. So I have behind me a poster from the Global Protection cluster that really illustrates the diversity, I think, of the affected communities. So we really need to adapt our language and our way of communicating to each of these different groups and persons. Next, I wanted to highlight innovation. We talked a lot about innovation and it does bring many opportunities as highlighted by Matthew, but it should be driven for and by local organizations and affected communities as they are on the front lines of conflict. We need to make sure they can actually use this innovation and have everything in place so that it works. Next, what I want to highlight, trust. Almost all the speakers have highlighted this, the importance of trust. So it's not only about the number of people receiving information, but do they understand it? Do they trust it? And will they act upon it? I've noticed a question in a chat box. Someone asked, how do we measure trust? And that's a critical question, which I think would deserve a whole new webinar, but I want to say in my action, when we do risk education activities, we generally measure knowledge, attitude and practices before and after the risk education activities, which help to see if people have trusted information and have changed their attitudes and practice. Next point, coordination. So most of our humanitarian system is organized either around specific issues or risk, for instance, food insecurity, gender-based violence, explosive ordinance, or organized on persons, refugees, children, IDPs. So this issue is complicated because we all come with our needs assessment, with our communication campaign, our outreach campaign. And frankly, there is the risk of overload of information. As we complained that there is a risk of death by guidance in the context of COVID-19, I think that some of the affected communities could well complain about too many assessments, too many communication and overload. So this issue of how do we coordinate our community outreach is critical. And I think that the protection cluster, the ISC resource group working on accountability to affected people and others, we really need to try to tackle this at the country level and try to make sure we don't tire affected communities. And my last point is one of the speakers said, it's not just about communications, it's about protection. There's many protection issues in this work. So here I want to make a suggestion. How can we together transform the way we do business so that the affected communities are in the driving seat when it comes to prioritizing the risk that we need to mitigate and address. And I want to share with you a feedback I got recently from Haiti. Someone from Haiti was telling me, you know, COVID-19 is the least of our worries, lowlessness, insecurity, and the fact that this has caused economic activities to stop are the real issues and are leading to food insecurity and would get worse in coming months. So we need to really, I think, listen to affected communities about what is it that they really worry about. And last but not least, I want to remind you all that there is now an evaluation form. So I would be super grateful if you could comment on this event and I'm going to just ask our host to share the evaluation form. And that's it for me. Thanks again to everybody who participated. Thank you, Christelle. Thank you all of the panelists. I'm sorry we had to rush you through, but it was such a wealth of riches we couldn't choose between all of your amazing presentations. Attendees, thank you for sticking with us. Incredible, we will be back with you within the week, next two weeks maybe with a full treatment of detailed answers to your questions and all of the panel presentations and the PowerPoints and bios and contact information and resources and links for you to follow. And we can't wait to hear more from you. Here, let me put the link to the evaluation in the chat box. This is what it's all about, being responsive to your questions and real time. There you go. Thank you so much, everyone. We're really grateful for your presence and your interest and your questions and your engagement and the work that we know you're gonna bring to making RCCE central and responsive information central to humanitarian aid response from here on out. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much.