 Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining. I think it's time we start the session. So thank you so much for joining a very good morning and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you so much. This is the session today is called the grassroot responses from the COVID-19 frontline. And the session next slide please. So the session is part of the initiative called voices from the frontline, which is a joint initiative by international center for climate change and development and climate and development knowledge networks CDKN, and which also feeds into one of the knowledge components of global resilience partnership CRP. So we thank you everyone for joining today's session before we start our main session, I would like to quickly go through a few housekeeping rules. So the session is being recorded from the very beginning and will be made public. And if you want to speak and want to add something with any of the speakers or with the ongoing conversation, please raise your hand so that our session host can unmute you. But in otherwise, you can always use the chat box to ask questions and comments and feedbacks. And in any case, if you feel any technical problems, please write to me mantra at gmail.com she will take care of the problem and try to fix as soon as possible. And I would request you all to kindly be fully present during this session. Thank you so much everyone I hope the session will be a very interesting and engaging one I really hope that you all be actively participating during the session. So now I would like to invite Dr. Shanas Musa, the director at the climate and development knowledge network to start the session with her opening remarks for Shanas over to you. Thank you. Thank you sharing. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. As mentioned I'm Shanas Musa director at the climate and development knowledge network CDKN, which is a program that is coordinated by an NGO called South South North we based in Cape Town South Africa. And we run the CDKN in partnership with regional partners equally South Asia flaw in Latin America and ODI. The funding we run the program with is from Canada's IDRC and the Royal Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was, it's with great pleasure that I welcome you today on behalf of CDKN, the International Center for Climate Change and Development ICCAD, the Global Resilience Partnership and slum dwellers international to this session about grassroots responses from the COVID-19 frontline. And it's really great to see some old friends in the list of attendance and a special welcome to all our old friends. Today we will be joined by esteemed colleagues and leaders from Bangladesh, Kenya and South Africa, who have been working for months now to support grassroots responses to COVID-19 and will share their responses to this crisis. CDKN and ICCAD are collaborating to share the stories and experiences of communities in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and recall the series voices from the frontline. What has been emerging from these stories is that rather than powerless victims and beneficiaries of assistance, local community leaders and the grassroots organizations are leading their own efforts to respond to the crisis. They're using their own resources, their own social networks, knowledge and strategies that they have used to respond to historic and previous shocks. Often they are responding to COVID in the face of multiple other shocks and stresses, such as cyclones, environmental pollution and even locust plagues. They are not just dealing with COVID. We've already published 16 stories to date and you can find them on the ICAD and CDKN websites and I'd like to encourage you to visit the websites and have a read of these stories. What is particularly striking about these voices from the frontline is that local people are articulate and specific about how external assistance could be designed and delivered to fall the community needs that they have identified and which they cannot fulfill themselves. Community members are best placed, and this is what we've seen through the story series, to contribute information about their local needs and to connect with programs run by and resources and resource by government and external actors. Communities are very eager to share their knowledge and engage with external agencies as partners to co-create solutions, but often their voices are not being heard. So this story series is part of a wider effort led by the global resilience partnership with other partners, including slum dwellers international, to work with these grassroots organizations and partners to help reposition the role of grassroots organizations as agents of change and recognize the critical value in building a more resilient post COVID-19 world. This is so that external organizations, governments, donors, NGOs can better understand and strengthen these local actions and voices and support existing leadership and capacities of communities that are there. So not creating new but working with what they use. These stories are shaping an emerging set of messages that will be taken into various forum moving forward. Amongst these will be the climate adaptation summit, which is hosted by the Dutch, and this will be happening in January 2021. And it also builds on the work of the Global Commission on adaptation. And like I've said before, it is important that these voices are taken further and into the global conversations that are happening. I'd like to encourage you, if you know of any organizations and or individuals supporting COVID-19 responses, and I would like to contribute to the series of stories to please ask them to get in touch with ICAD and CDKN. The link to the email will be shared in the chat box for you to please pass on. Sherin Mannen from ICAD will be leading us through the rest of the session and we really look forward to some interesting and engaging discussions. I would now like to hand over to my colleague Lucia from CDKN and she will talk us through some housekeeping rules and take us through a quick exercise so that we get to know each other better albeit a virtual setting. So thank you and over to you Lucia. Great. Good morning and good afternoon everyone. And, as Shana said, I'm Lucia, I'm going to be also working with CDKN. So let us get to know each other a little bit at the beginning of the session. So we will have a couple of interactive exercises to see where everybody's joining from. So we would like to get a bit of a sense of the countries that the participants that are today joining us are coming from. So you will see that in the chat box a link to a padlet map will soon appear. But before you click on it, please do look at the screen because we would like to show you how this works. So you can see that when you click on that link you will end up on this map. You can then go to the top right hand corner where the pink plus is and if you press on that, you can then type in the location where you are joining us from. So for example, we see that Clemence is from London, and then you can type in your name and the organization that you work for. So this is Clem, and she is joining from IED. Then you can click anywhere on the map and your entry will be saved. And if you want to zoom out, if you go to the bottom right hand corner, you will see the little minus and you can go back to see the whole world. So do come back though to the Zoom room because we will be sharing our screen so we can then look together at who is joining. So please do go into the chat box, click on the link and fill in so that we have a sense of where everybody's from today. And we can start to see once you come back to the Zoom room that the map is starting to fill up. I see a few participants from Europe from we see somebody from Tanzania and Kenya possibly from India. So the map is definitely filling up. So let's say hi to a few people. If we click on some of those pins, we will be able to say hello. So for example, oh, we have an anonymous person who didn't put the name and organization from Bangalore. We have somebody from Singapore or from the Hawaii Recommission, Anwesha, hello and welcome. We have three people joining us from South Africa. Oh, Sumiti, that's an old friend as well. Hi, Sumiti from Cape Town. From Uganda, we have Godiverm all from the women climate centers international welcome. We have somebody from the Netherlands from Utrecht, but we don't have the name. If by any chance you are unable to open the pellet, it may be because of your browser. So I do recommend that you use Chrome or Firefox on Explorer. Unfortunately, it does have a glitch the pellet app. So if you have been unable to to fill in that may be the reason or you can just copy them the link and put it on on a different browser. I'm afraid. But that's great. I think we have a good sense. Apologies for those of you who could not manage. But I think the map is looking more populated. So many of you did. So that is great. So let us do something different now. We would like now to see the organizations you are joining us from. So you will see now a mentor up here in the chat. And you can please click on that link. And then once again, if you come back to the zoom room, we'll be able to see the types of organizations and that you are joining us from. So let us see as it starts to fill up. I hope you have all seen the link in the chat box and that you are able this time to fill it in. I don't see yet anything changing. I hope that the links are working and that it's just still in the process of happening. Oh, here we go. So we have them at the moment the same numbers from international NGOs and research organizations or think thanks for academia. We have some donors, we have someone from the national government and three from our community based organizations. That looks great. I think some of you are probably still in the process of filling. Yes, it's increasing. I see 19 of you have filled so far. So research organizations are the ones that are leading the way for now and think thanks. Let us maybe have a final refresher to see if if more of you have managed to fill in the mentor. Yeah, so we I think we have a good range of which is nice like from NGO government donors and community based organizations and then more international partners I think that looks great. And that should contribute to some rich discussions. I also see many of you are introducing yourselves in the chat. I think that is great. But yeah, let me pass back on the microphone to to Sharon who will take us through through the session. Welcome again. Thank you so much, Lucia. I thought the interactivity session was really interesting and also we have a lot of them introducing themselves in the chat box. So I think there's a really good mix of people coming from different sectors and different organizations and I hope the session today will be a really intriguing one. So, before proceeding to our men's session I would like to quickly give a quick outline of our session. So today our session is divided into three segments. The first one is a storytelling session where we will have three speakers coming from three different countries, sharing their stories of building community resilience at the time of COVID-19. And then we will have four breakout room discussions to have an engaging in-depth discussion around scaling up the issues, scaling up the grassroots initiatives, and then followed by a reflection section where we will have representatives from FCDO and CDAP to share their reflections on the issues discussed and identified throughout the session. Next slide please. So during the storytelling session, if you have any questions, comments and feedbacks, please feel free to put that in the chat box. But in addition to that, we also have, we will have a padlet question running. My colleague will put the padlet link to the chat box shortly. And Clemens, if you can quickly show the screen with the padlet questions on. So if you click on the link shared by my colleague in the chat box, you will be taken to this to this page where we have three different questions. So our three speakers will talk about their roles in building community resilience, but we all know that beyond that there are a lot of roles that the grassroots groups play during any crisis in building resilience. So you can just click on this plus button and post your comments or your responses. And when a comment is put, anyone can put a like on that comment as well. So after that question, we also have a couple of questions on what are the enabling factors or the strengths that allows these participants to succeed in their interventions and what are the challenges and constraints that they face. So while listening to the speakers, we would really appreciate if you can populate this sheet with your thoughts and feedbacks. Thank you so much. Next slide please. There we go. Yes, so let me just quickly welcome you all to our first storytelling session learning from community change makers of the COVID-19 frontline. Today, we will be having three speakers. She is truly from Bangladesh, David silicon from Kenya and rose more money from Cape Town. Next slide. So the first intervention that we would look into is the one by issue Lee. So we will watch a video that she has very kindly prepared us is prepared for us highlighting her intervention on ensuring food security during the time of COVID-19. She is a freelance journalist, a researcher, a filmmaker based at Dhaka Bangladesh, but she also runs a community school at her locality, which looks after the community, the informal slum dwellers and their children. So there are a lot of interesting stuff that she is doing. So Clemens, if we can start showing the video. Thank you. So at the beginning, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, we had a feeling of being in Bangladesh. So we decided to do something. We wanted to do something for our people. So I gave a Facebook status that I wanted to do something for them. That was our story. I was talking about the organization. I was talking about training and how to work. I saw that there are a lot of families around me who are very independent and have a lot of daily work. I saw that there are a lot of people who are very ill. They are very worried. They are not able to speak anything. So I asked them what is their situation and how they are doing. They told me that they are not working. They are not able to eat. They are not able to eat. They are going to work. What will they do? So I was able to do something for my people. So if I want to do something for them, I will do something for them. So I decided to do something for them. Then I started working with Bithi Khoshe. We both decided to do something for our people. We had a lockdown and we had a problem with what had happened to us. Then we decided to do something for them and work with them. Then I started working with Munna. She gave me everything. At first she gave me a list of things that I didn't know about. I listed them all at home. So when I started listing them all at home, I had a feeling that I was not going to be able to do anything special. But you can't come out of the house. If you come out of the house, you will know. You will feel the same way. Then I understood that if I go out of the house, I will get my protection. I will know what will happen to me. Then I saw that each family has their own family. There are 3, 4, 5, 7 members of the family. So I decided to do something for them. I took all of them and sat down and did the work with the family members. I got to know more about them. I gave them more information about the other family. I was able to get the information that they were doing. But I was able to get the information that they were doing. I was told that I have other children. I told them that I will help them. I worked with them. I took the whole load of rice, potatoes, onions, and sent them to the forest. The animals had to take more oil and rice and sent it to the forest. I saw that they couldn't do it on their own. I saw that when the fish were gone, it was gone by two or three days. Let's go. Then, what will we eat after that? I have another idea. There is no work. There is no work. There is no road. There is no police. There is no distance. There is no police. There is no mark. There is no sign. There is no sign. There is no sign. Then, I thought, the news that is coming from Chaldal, if we do a Jyothoranna house, then our tension will be less. Then, I came to Jyothoranna house. It was very empty in front of us. When it was empty, we started to make a small stove with green leaves. We could eat both of them if we wanted to. There is no food now. So, that's how it started. We started with Ranna. Many of my friends gave it to me. There was no sugar, no vegetables, no sugar. So, it was very easy for me. So, that's how we started our Jyothoranna house. Among them, one of the most important words was that, in Bangladesh, if it was empty, we would charge all of them. So, that's how we caught them. Then, I took all of them and made a group. Then, we went to the farm. We had to charge all of them. We started the farm by cutting the soil. We made seeds. We made seeds. We planted seeds. We started to eat each day. Every day, we started to plant the seeds. We started from the plant. We took the seeds from our house. We collected them all. I feel very happy. I am very tensed. Then, some of us would help us. Thank you so much for sharing the video. I think that was really interesting. And, thanks to Isha that she has kindly made this video for us, highlighting the interventions that she has taken. Just to let you know, all beyond ensuring food security, Isha also runs a community school and particularly looks after and educates the slum children. She has been successfully doing that for quite a while. One interesting factor about Isha's story that I thought is she initially started single-handedly and with some short time interventions like providing food reliefs and food packages. But later she realized that this is not going to last and she needs to think something sustainable by engaging the community. That's when she initiated the community kitchen and later the community garden. I think this story is really inspiring and motivating for us as well so that we can also think of doing something for these communities, particularly urban slum dwellers who are in the front line and extending support during the time of crisis but hardly get recognized or get any interventions from our end. So thank you very much, Shuli. We also have Shuli with us today. If you have any questions and comments for Shuli, please put that on the chat box and we can come back to you during the question-answer session. Now, Clemens, next slide. Yes. The next speaker is Mr. David Silakan from Kenya and he is the coordinator at Pastoralist Alliance for Resilience and Adaptation in Northern Range Lands. So, David, I would now request you to start speaking and if possible to start on the video. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. Good evening. People all over the globe. When COVID is... Here, maybe you can turn off the video and speak if that helps. Fastic case that was in demand for people actually who are from the urban because they would run away from you on urban disease. So, okay. Good mind of semi-arid and arid areas and then, you know, water scarcity and all other issues of conflict, natural space conflict and so I tried there and subordinated parts of Ethiopia and you experienced that also Somalia and so infiltration of small answers also an issue there. With COVID-19, the fast case was recorded in the month of March and the stigma and the information was not very clear for us here because people thought that this is an urban disease and people would think that if you come to the urban, the city or from anywhere, you are the one who is contracting the disease so you bring the disease to them. Unfortunately for us, we were able to do a lot of awareness using the WHO guidelines and protocols, the government also regulations using radio technology that's using local community, local radios. We would use also some pre-recorded messages. We would do campaigns like using the public address systems mounted on vehicles just to make sure because knowing the fact that 98% of where we work they are very illiterate so we would actually make use of the local language and also music that have been developed in such a way that to send the messages that COVID is there and communities have already organized themselves and they try to use local hubs to prevent themselves from contracting the disease but unfortunately some of these hubs they would think that they are getting brewed liquor like vodka, the local vodka here would heal you or prevent you from getting the disease or getting a cup of tea with three teaspoons of salt and then there are so many misinformation that we are not actually correct about COVID and currently that we have understood how COVID is transmitted they have really taken a lot of precautions even sleeping outside because those small hearts are very congested and your vibration is very small is very little so they would sleep observing this phase that is actually required for organization and organizing the communities the communities have been able to put resources together, we were able to provide PPE, materials equipment, foodstuffs go sit with them and talk with them and also use radio messaging and even texting and even dramatizing from other alliance members they use drama to do that and use women's songs to create awareness on that so I think communities were very very very fast to address that knowing that the Kenyan government was not really prepared for this pandemic so the community took up the roles and they actually would tell you don't get me corona and the greeting in terms of hands greeting because we are also social people within our setup we live in we live with communities that are extended families so you find that ok if one person gets contracts say corona I think it will spread so fast but I think the cases in northern Kenya were very fewer than in other areas because of the precautions that the people took up and took up the initiatives to make sure that they do not get that secondly one of the issues is the change of behavior in terms of the area where we are that has minimal water washing hands you know it's quite really difficult because you have to get 20 liter gallon of water and then it's very far away that you can get that water so it's actually something that they took the initiative because they said if it is washing hands and we have scarcity of water how do you make sure that we don't get corona how do you make sure that we have our own hygiene so in terms of that people are very cautious and the awareness has also been part of the campaign by women especially women the young people and the elderly are very much so much scared that they will tell you don't come closer to me so those are some of the mechanisms that built that made them the spread of corona actually pronounced it not okay yeah thank you so much David I thought that was really interesting the way you highlighted that how your alliance and other grass root leaders have fought against the misbeliefs and yes do you like to add something David I think we have lost him but David you can put in the chat box if you want to add additional comments and I can put the policeman here sexual harassment of young girls along the cities was also something that we experienced and also we saw bribing and all illegal activities happening now was even drugs addiction trafficking of drugs from the border of Ethiopia coming all the way and police being brides so we had all those issues happening within this COVID-19 so thank you thank you so much David I think we are a bit ahead of time so I think I have to cut you here but I can get back to you during the question answer session thank you so much for sharing your story and we really appreciate the fact that the way you and other grass root organized against the misbeliefs and traditional beliefs and also the rising number of gender-based violence sexual harassment and the rising number of drug addiction and crime I think we also need to recognize that during the time of crisis like COVID we have the immediate public health impacts or the economic impacts but there is also a silent rise in terms of social conflicts and social challenges so we also need to keep check of that and fight against them thank you so much David Clemens if you can I don't yes on that note I would like to call upon our third storyteller Miss Rose Molokwane she is a coordinator at the slum dwellers international Rose if you can unmute yourself and start speaking thank you thank you very much and thanks a lot for giving me this opportunity to explain myself and my organization around this pandemic when this coronavirus came into our communities it was just a surprise because people were not anticipating to get this kind of sickness but nonetheless because SSDI we have been organizing ourselves for all these years in order for ourselves to be in the knowledge of how to live our lives when the pandemic was affecting our communities we started to come together and say what should be done we are there on our own it is affecting our families it is affecting individuals and what is it that needs to be done to really address this challenge that has come all over the world what we did was that we listened to the regulations that governments were giving us hand washing using of masks social distancing but you know a lot of people will never agree on that because if you don't get sick you don't agree that the sickness can affect you so that was the main problem that we are facing with some of the people in our communities nonetheless what we did was that we started as others are saying we started campaigning educating our people to understand the danger of this pandemic we used the pamphlets and the posters to educate our people we went around visiting especially our members of the federations to understand the difficulty that we are facing because of this pandemic the other thing that we were looking at was that what about those who are already affected you know in our organization we've got old people who know what they were doing in the past when they get sick they will advise us on the heaps that needs to be used to address this sickness for those who are being infected and we started to use that I remember my son was also infected and I started to use those heaps and then he got cured and then because we realized that it's important for us to have our meetings visually like any other people in our organizations we started to share the information on how we tackled this pandemic when it has infected some of our members social distancing is another difficulty in our communities especially in informal settlements whereby a lot of people are staying in one shake and how do we think they will get that social distancing done in their shake like for instance in South Africa the government especially the Department of Human Settlement detailed what they called command council that came up with ideas of thinking that they will address the dense population of our people in informal settlements unfortunately they couldn't reach their target that they wanted to reach because they never engaged the people when they decide to do what they call de-densification meaning that it was a silent eviction or a silent relocation of the people but because people are not they were afraid they have been looking themselves in their houses so it was not easy for them to agree with our government to move out of their shakes to go to their alternative what they call temporary shelters it was a difficult task because people were not shared information about this particular process but what we came up with also as the organization through SDI and specifically in South Africa we agreed to produce ourselves our own sanitizers we used our own mixtures that can create alcohol in it we were giving it to each other we then go to the government to say we need your support on this that's when dropping an ocean from their support came into our communities but it couldn't reach out to the most vulnerable and the most needy people in numbers that's why we agreed to use our savings you know in SDI we use savings as a tool to mobilize and organize ourselves but because we were faced with this problem we advised each other to say let's take our savings and also our NGO they should now decide to reallocate the funding that they had to support the activities so that we address directly the issues of this pandemic so we started to utilize our savings to have food parcels for our people to have sanitizers for our people to create masks for our people and we also addressed the food security for our people making soup kitchens giving out food for our people who are sick visiting our sick people but we engaged our government even though they were not listening so what I'm trying to say is that we are continuing to address this pandemic we are continuing to use the data that we are collecting to identify the problem but the challenge is the services that the government were supposed to be delivered to our people we struggle to get water we struggle to have better sanitation we struggle to have garbage collection in our different communities but we continue to help each other in addressing all these issues I'm supporting all my colleagues who were giving the presentations exactly what they are doing poor people are innovative they are innovative their initiatives are getting better and better we only need the support from the funders from government from everyone who is ready to support our initiative that we have started we have built a very strong movement SSDI we empowered women to address this pandemic and it is getting successful but the challenge is the buy-in from our government thank you very much I have a very excellent delivery I think everything that you have said we are totally in agreement and this is interesting I have found one interesting factor when David was speaking he was saying they had to fight against certain traditional beliefs of those means beliefs of having locally brewed whiskey or vodka to get rid of the virus but in your case it is important for you that you use those herbs and herbal medicines to get cured and in fact you have the first experience of curing your son from the COVID-19 disease so this is really interesting and I also like the way you have put the challenges as well that you are all in there with all networks all supports and all data but you always don't receive support from local government and national government I think this particular issue is very well put on today's session because on the next segment we will also be discussing how we can scale up these issues at different levels so with that note I would like to thank our three speakers for sharing their excellent interventions with us I think our participants have also thoroughly enjoyed and now we will open the floor for a quick question answer session we already have quite a few interesting questions in the chat box I think first I would like to go to David the first question David that you have is have the traditional family structure strengthened during the time of COVID-19 I mean in your community family structures and bonds have been strengthened during the COVID-19 despite the absence of effective government support and the second question for you is has the COVID-19 pandemic motivated people to take more lead to act during the climate change on the area of climate change adaptation as well so David over to you Thank you so much Sharon and I think the family structures are still very strong now because family units have been united people came all the way from the cities and they went back home because they were afraid of the corona because it spread in the cities so they went back and united with their families and then we have been having intergenerational ceremonies that are happening whereby within that COVID-19 people were brought to came together and then they would learn their tradition they would learn their respect for elders and I think now we are more stronger in terms of traditional governance structures than before when it comes to the issue the second question was about the initiatives of the communities the people have gone back to their bio enterprise and looking at the the species of plants that they used to take especially for women when they are pregnant the elderly in terms of bone formation they have all those things these hubs could treat them or could make them become better immune to several things and then the other thing that brought about also the issue of locus the response to locus also something else that the communities were responding and they really went against the spraying by idle spraying because they lost livestock they lost perennial grasses so the communities are also coming together and also challenging the systems so that's the question that we have we have one quick comment by Misha which is I would like to understand if there have been any community initiatives that have involved measures other than food packages hand washing and sanitizer distribution I would also like to understand how we access what our communities need from us as their partner organizations so I would like to know if there are any issues in our voices from the front line initiative we have already published more than 15 stories which addresses issues other than delivering food packages and hand sanitizers issues like the youth led interventions community mapping and then fighting against gender based violence so I will share the link to our site in the chat box one question is from Vincent is that for all types of building resilience to COVID and climate change how do we attract the attention and support of government to provide the services so as you were speaking about having less support and coordination from the government can you elaborate how organizations like you and SDI can get more support and more commitments from the government thank you very much again I think we have a very important and strong tool that we use as SDI which is data collection community survey collecting stories from different communities because we are talking about partnerships we always go to our local government national government use our data to make them understand of the needs of the people yes it doesn't happen as we wish but in some of the communities there are those municipalities local government who are listening to what we are showing them from our data collection like for instance in South Africa we did have this NGO that supported us through IBP meaning international budget participatory program and then we used that to identify and survey all the services that the people are needing in some of the areas we were able to sign memorandum of argument with some municipalities who started to work with us so my answer to that question is that we have to continue to be strong to collect information because information is power and then power makes you to be able to engage with the external world so what we need is to buy in the real partnership that we are trying to forge with local government and national government and also outside funding agencies because if government is not ready to help but communities are ready to do something for themselves to be self-reliant there is a need for funding agencies to also tap in to support what communities have already started to do thank you very much thank you Rose I think that was excellent and I think we will have this discussion forwarded in our next segment but before that maybe I can quickly go to Ishrath Shuli and a few of you wanted to know more interventions apart from food reliefs distribution of masks and protective cures for the ease of Ishrath Shuli I would like to translate the question to Harin Bangla and then again translate her answer in English to you Ishrath, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes, if you say what challenges you are facing if you say what are the challenges and how do you share your school experience with us? Actually when I started COVID-19 I didn't know much but COVID-19 or COVID-19 is a part of life but outside of that there is a lot of challenges in life COVID-19 has nothing to do with it there is nothing to do with it because the women who live here have a lot of children but the husband who lives here is a drug addict and the husband who works in different fields or runs a mess or works in a small company and the husband can't take care of his wife or can't take care of his wife because of the situation and the husband and the children can't take care of their children because the children are the same they don't listen to any news they have nothing to eat it is not right and the problem is that they are immune to illness I think I can do something with them At the beginning, I was interested in their culture, their culture, their dance. At the same time, I was very interested in them. I was also interested in the children that you taught us. I don't know the language, but I was interested in them. At that time, I was interested in creating a school for the children. I am a teacher now. Now, no one likes them, they are not men. They are very happy. They are very well-received, they receive very well. They receive very well. It is not like the children have a child, they don't have a child. But they don't do that. They come to school with great pleasure. I was a child at that time. I was a child because I went to a large house in a spring. My school was under the spring, so I had entered the spring. I couldn't do the classes there. So participants, let me just quickly translate what Julie has just said. So she basically works with the urban informal settlers and slum dwellers who live a very miserable life and leave hands to mouth and most of them are daily wage earners and particularly the women, most of them are domestic workers. They work as house helps in, you know, affluent people's houses. But in most cases, these women's are the sole earner in their family and their husbands are mostly often they don't have jobs or they don't, you know, they don't want to do the job because their wives are earning. And since the wives have to be on work for a long hours, it also increases the rate of domestic violence and it also creates a bad impact on their children as they are detached from their parents for the entire day and they roam around in the in the roads without any education and no proper guidance and food. So realizing all that, Julie has started a community school in her locality with her own budget and rented a small hut there and she started first engaging these local children's by with all those some cultural activities, some poems, and then she also started providing, you know, formal education. But then she was faced with the urban flooding situations. We had prolonged rainings situations and it resulted in urban flooding and then she had to close her school for a while. But then again, she has been situations you better. She again started the school, but she's saying she has her own limitations in terms of budgets and capacities to run the schools. So she also seeks support, particularly from the government and other NGOs and agencies, if they can come forward and help people like Julie who works wholeheartedly with the communities and marginal people, particularly for the children and in their education, securing their life. If you have any questions or any feedback to Julie, please feel free to post it on the chat box. I think we are by the end of our question answer session. Now I would hand it over to my colleague, Ida, who would quickly guide us for the next segment, the breakout room sessions, and then we will be divided into four breakout groups for in-depth discussion. Thank you, Ida, over to you. Yes, thank you, Sherin. Okay, so for this next session, we'll be going into four breakout groups and you'll be automatically sent into these groups. Each group will have one facilitator and you have 20 minutes to discuss one question and then come up with three solutions to this question and then we will report back into the main plenary and wrap up from there. Thank you. Our session host will now create four breakout rooms. Please hang in there for a while and you will be located in one of the breakout rooms and soon talk to you there. Thank you. Thank you so much, everyone, for coming back to the plenary. I hope, I thought that was very quick and I think we should have allocated a bit more time for the breakout session. But Nandilis, I think we had a good discussion and maybe we can quickly brief on the three solutions that each group has identified from the breakout groups. Maybe we can put this slide on. Yes, so maybe I can quickly go through. This looks a bit messy, though, but I'm sure we can all, you know, brief and highlight the points that we have identified. So the, as you all know, the breakout groups were divided into four rooms where we had to point out, we had to look into how we scale up the initiatives and in local, national and global level and finally how the transparency and accountability issues can be checked throughout the process. So I was facilitating the room one where the questions we looked answers for was how should local government work more closely with grassroots groups to co-create solutions. So the first solution that was unanimously highlighted by all the participants that the grassroots groups are able, they have a large network and they are able to provide real-time updated data to the local government, be it in terms of targeting the actual candidates for support, be it other hazard or risk-related data. Mairi was highlighting that how communities can provide data on the locations of floods and flood hazard mappings as well. So that is one top solution. The second one is the local governments can provide technical supports and trainings to the grassroots communities and this can be a three-way partnership where the local government can work together with local universities as well as well as the grassroots groups to kind of co-create the capacity building manuals and trainings and support them with the devices such as the smart phones or internet packages and all the capacity building training. And another important issue was the issue of legitimization and support that the local government should recognize first of all the grassroots groups and the amazing works they have been doing and also legitimize the data that they can formally use it and also provide a platform for the grassroots groups where they can work together, co-create solutions, and the grassroots groups can also involve in the decision-making process. So these were the three solutions that were identified in room one. Now Lucia, if you could go to work, right? Sure, yes, I no longer see the slide, but I can look at my own version, like I don't think the slide is anymore on the screen. I think it will appear soon in any case. So we were addressing the questions, how should national governments work with grassroots groups to ensure their policies are informed by local realities? Given the disconnect we often see between like national policymaking and the fact they undermine what happens at a local level. So our group, which was great and very participatory, suggested that we need to use the grassroots and community structures like for example women groups or like the SDI network or like these already organized groups so that the voices of them can come into policy decisions. We also were suggesting like a given example in Kenya that there is a stronger push for government to put in place like formal decentralized and devolved structures. For example, we see like the county structures that exist in Kenya and those can ensure that there are formal governance processes to have like more consultative processes happen. We can also get voices like heard. However, we also recognize that sometimes even when there are these like formalized governance processes they actually do not lead to implementation and action. Like sometimes they're there but the consultation does not happen for example in Bangladesh we had heard. So I think it's quite important in that case to ensure accountability. So that means that like the grassroots groups like the NGOs, the CSOs really need to demand accountability when those like structures already exist. And also like we had like a bonus one I see it came with a dollar sign to really consider areas where government is not in control. Like because sometimes like ethnic control areas do not have like these formal yeah governance structures. So they should also be we should also think about how things occur there. Yeah. Excellent. Eda, yeah. Yes I was in charge of room three. I see that we're really short on time here but I'll try to make this one quick. So my group was also very participatory and we had the question how can international aid agencies ensure resources directly reach the most vulnerable. We came up with three solutions. There's a need to bridge the gap between donors and grassroots organizations possibly by inviting them directly to meetings or also by not having such rigid criteria that local groups cannot meet. Another one is donors to work directly or work through an alliance of organizations like SDI and to forge better relationships with grassroots organizations. And lastly it's important to work with the national and local governments for these countries. Thank you. Shababa. Hi my name is Shababa Haq. I was in charge of room four. The question we had a really good discussion and we heard a lot of really important points. I tried to capture these three. So the question that we had in hand was how can grassroots groups keep track of transparency and accountability of all the external actors involved. So the top three points that came out are the following. So one of the suggestions was to include actors such as journalists and local researchers from universities to engage in the process. This will ensure accountability and also bridge the knowledge gap. I feel like having researchers from local universities is especially fruitful because they're embedded within the system already and this can be they can act as a knowledge hub and there's a process of continuity and sustainability in the process. So having these agents within the process will ensure more accountability. The second thing that we heard was the tracking the channelization of finances at all stages not just from the donors and at different stages of the whole process just to ensure that the economic support that is provided that the relief is provided reaches the most vulnerable and does not get lost in the middle with middlemen. And the third thing I think it was a more broader discussion and I tried to narrow it down is to use first-hand data especially data that has been obtained by grassroot leaders led by local NGOs. They have a wider network and they have more information so use first-hand data rather than refined data that is published and also to use community forums and local radios to inform a community member so that the information is more easily accessible. So those who have connections are not the only ones who are made aware. So I think these are the three points that came out of my discussion. Thank you so much. Thank you so much everyone for very quickly facilitating the sessions and coming up with three and even four solutions. So I thought that was great. Now without further ado I would switch to our next segment which is the reflection section with our two speakers. Now I will hand it over to Deon to facilitate the session. Thank you Deon over to you. Thank you so much Sharon and really wonderful experience to be part of this project and this session. I think overriding message for me from this session is that you know whilst we're celebrating the role that grassroot organizations play and the important role that they play in building resilience we should not do this in a way that that shifts the burden of responsibility from those who have more resources and more power. So we should do it in a way which amplifies that investment in this invaluable resilience asset that we have in grassroot organizations. So a very very strong message and the team that we're able to take that forward. To join me in this last segment and wrapping up and hearing thoughts of what they heard we have Johanna Pomberg who's the Senior Policy Advisor from the Swedish International Development Agency and Vincent Gaini from the newly formed foreign Commonwealth and Development Office previously known to all of us as differed the component that Vincent represented previously. But the question I'm posing to both Johanna and Vincent is you know what are the main messages that you will take back to your agencies from what you've heard in this session and how can we together amplify this investment and support grassroot organizations so that we have more resilient communities for future shocks. Vincent I'm seeing you on screens I'll go over to you first. Thanks Dion, a pleasure to join you this morning. Some really encouraging and powerful messages came out of this morning session and that's what really struck me was how many communities are prepared to self-organize and to actually take the initiatives themselves. What also came very strongly was and the messages coming from South Africa or Bangladesh, Kenya all of them really was that the sort of the gap still exists between government and local communities. And despite the severity and the seriousness of the COVID crisis and the long-term severity of the climate crisis there still is quite a gap between governments being able to reach those communities and I think a real sort of message is that there still needs to be some sort of interlocutor between government and community in order to give them the voice that needs to be heard at sort of local government level, regional government level, and national government policy making level in order to be able to respond to those community needs. The demands are there clearly the need is there but the resources aren't being directed for a variety of reasons and I think that there's a lot still needs to be done on creating the voice and the sort of empowerment at that local level for the governments to hear and then the governments to talk to us as donors and the donors to come together in consortia or sort of joint platforms where we can respond more effectively. So very encouraging but also realising that we're still a long way along that road to go yet. Thanks Dior. Excellent thank you so much Vincent and yes I think investing in that gap, closing the gap I think we've heard really good examples of how many of these grassroots organisations are collecting vital information that is critical to closing that gap with municipalities with local authorities but perhaps we can do more to bring those two institutions together, grassroots organisations and local authorities. Johanna can I hand over to you please? Yes thank you Deon and thank you all for a very interesting morning. I will not repeat what Vincent said because I actually agree with everything but what I would like to bring to the table is the importance of these kinds of sessions you know where we sort of realise that we are not alone. There are so many grassroots communities all over the world who have similar problems, they face problems with the administration and their own administration and we as donors can come in and facilitate some of this and we can reach some levels that a local community or local organisation cannot do and we do it at different levels. Here we are at a more of a global level but the other thing that strikes me is exactly what came up this the resilience the fact that local communities actually say right no one is coming to help us what can we do there is someone there who will do it and this we in our little discussion group we Vincent brought up and I agree fully with that it's very difficult for us at this level at global level where I am now to go in and directly cooperate with someone at local level even though I see the need for it and therefore we have the different levels in our case bilateral regional and global level and these different levels have different opportunities to connect people in different ways and I feel there are a number of organisations here today that actually receive funding from the Swedish government and the fact that we are joining them together is for me a huge step forward and as I said also in our group it's not always a question of the money it's a question of linking people to get them to understand we are not alone other people are struggling we can learn from each other and this kind of structure can facilitate that by strengthening the people morally that we are not here fighting in on our own there are plenty of other people and how can we we all play a role here thanks Joanna um yeah a really strong message I think you know very often in these situations we we feel alone and in our various roles and I would imagine at a grassroots organisation level that can be very much accentuated so this community this dialogue becomes very important you spoke about working across scales I think grassroots federations are so critical to allow us to to reach across scale so we can we can work with federations of grassroots organisations that can reach the local level quite quickly so it's a really really important but you know returning back to your original point Johanna before I hand over to Salim to wrap up is the important dialogue and you know seeing the different players we've had on this session has been you know critically important I hope that this community can continue to dialogue and continue to work together having development agencies, grassroots organisations, international organisations all in the same virtual room talking about how we can take this forward is is critical now we need to move the the talking into action so hoping we can do that very soon Salim I will hand over to you for the final rapper it seems like we lost Salim unfortunately at this moment yes I think I think he had a bit of a connection issue maybe he was there for a while and I think we no longer have him here then maybe John you can you can summarize the session in a bit absolutely thank you so much Sharon and I was doing a little bit of a summary there so perhaps also just to thank everybody partners Ekad you played a critical role in this project CDKN and Slum Doylers International STI thank you so much for initiating this work working together this is a project that came together in a learning through doing way we didn't wait until we had an elaborate plan we didn't wait until we were able to access massive resources we decided as organisations to move forward to start this dialogue between grassroots organisations international organisations and development agencies about how do we bolster how can we invest more in grassroots organisations due to the critical role that they play in building resilience so this is a community that's action oriented that's working together and we hope that this session has helped with that dialogue and that we will continue to work together going forward this these sorts of dialogues will continue the voices from the front line is a continuing initiative we will on a monthly basis be getting together to continue to dialogue and to find solutions and to find ways in which we can invest more in grassroots organisations going forward so this is an ongoing dialogue and we would certainly welcome you all to be part of this journey with us but thank you so much Sharon for your excellent thanks Dion I think Salim has managed to join us again sorry Dr Hock if you can quickly say a few closing remarks thank you very much sorry I just lost the connection a few minutes ago so first of all let me thank everybody who participated in this excellent discussion today in this session for joining us and I really enjoyed the contributions I also want to thank my colleagues from ICAD and CDK for organising the event I know a lot of work went into it well done everybody um what I want to leave you with is an invitation the challenge is that are taking place across the world and aggregate them at the global level we we know the primary interlocutor is local governments working with local actors the secondary element is national governments and national actors but I want to avoid those two and I want to leapfrog to the global level and my challenge which is both to us myself and all of us collectively is how do we become more effective at the global level can we link all these different dots along the map that we had at the beginning and connect with each other more effectively than we've done in the past challenge opportunity is an invitation is if you want to take this journey together with us sign up you know tell us about it and and during the course of the next few days that we will be participating in this CBA 14 event together let us link up with each other get to know each other as much as possible and then after the CBA 14 is over we from our side and I speak now on behalf of both ICAD and CDK and we want to take this conversation forward we don't want to stop here we don't want to end here there will be a report there'll be an outcome but we want to take this people connection forward and I'll call it in my view sort of it is social capital versus the donors talking about finance capital you know we always focus on the finance capital but to me social capital is equally important and potentially equally powerful if we can harness it and so that's the challenge I want to take up and an invitation I want to give everybody of how do we enhance this social capital after CBA 14 and I'll give you two very specific dates along which we want to take this journey together the second the first date is in January of next year from the 21st to 24th of January we will be organizing a major conference called Gavashana Gavashana the Bangla word for research and we have a big theme on locally led adaptation and we want to bring all these grassroots groups together so we will plan collectively for using that event to take our journey forward and then next year CBA 15 is going to be hosted in Bangladesh by BRAC and we want to become more effective there so it's not just come together talk to each other have some good conversations and then we go home and we stay you know go back to normal we want to move things forward if we're not moving things forward then in my view we're not doing enough just talking and networking not enough we have to take the agenda forward we have to set ourselves goals we have to fight for those goals move forward with those goals and we have to help each other to do that and so I leave you with this invitation please do get in touch with us let us know if you want to be involved in this conversation going forward and we will sign you up when we can so we can do this going forward I'll stop there thank you very much okay thank you very much Salim for those closing words and thank you to to everyone for having participated thank you to all of the of you who have managed to stay until now we have gone a little bit over but I think it was worth it we have heard of some yeah some great contributions throughout the session so let us please with the closing just have a final mentimeter you will see the link in the chat box we would just like to hear from you whether you have learned something new today we would like to get a sense of what that is so if you're able to to please fill in this last mentimeter we will be closing with this and once again thank you to all the speakers the the great contributions we heard from all levels from the grassroots to the donors to the international partners I think it's been a very varied at scale day to start with this so thank you again and let us see whether what are some of the takeaways you have had I don't see anything yet but I hope you're all filling in your lessons we see that about partnering with all actors will bring great results indeed we have really heard that and we have strong partners so I think we we really have the potential to do so for those of you who have to leave bye bye and thanks again and if you do have the chance it would be great to see your lessons very inspiring and wish it could help to continue community capacity building yes indeed and I think this whole conference will will contribute to that we have one about accountability in the middle don't let those with more power and resources of the hook I agree very much with that we all have a role to play grassroots should be treated as enablers and not beneficiaries indeed there we see how much empowerment and capacity they have so how can we work together once again strong partnership will help us to reach our goals empowering grassroots to manage transparency and accountability as using actors like journalists as well as publications that also sounds important and it goes back to this accountability point importance of working through grassroots to reach local communities encouraging local universities to be embedded in the process also very important the role of another partner that perhaps we have not talked about as much the universities oh very sorry that some of you are unable to access the mentor but please do contribute in the chat and I can I can go and read also there community voices to demand for resources to support the resilience yeah insights from donors was useful but they still need to look at how connecting with grassroots rather than focusing on how it cannot work yeah I think that is a very good point so let's look at like what can work and like how we can like let's look at the enablers rather than the barriers and the challenges I think that's something important because we're often experts at looking at challenges stay strong and focused that's good we have a positive message so let's see god liver I have learned that networking and partnerships are very important but we need to take a step step forward and create an impact indeed so let us really work together for that um I think with this we can close them like maybe one last point maybe from the bottom no I think that's fine okay so once again thank you to everyone all the best for the rest of the conference and the week and we will be in touch and meet probably in some of the other sessions best wishes bye bye everybody thank you so much to everyone for joining just one last point I have shared my email address in the chat box again if you want to contribute in our VFL initiative please feel free to reach out to me and share stories thank you so much it's been I think we need a special a special thank to Shareen and her accident facilitation here here here well done thank you so much yes thank you and to the support team in the background thank you so much especially the volunteers and all the validators thank you yes thank you thank you very much everyone thanks everyone thank you bye