How is Covid-19 affecting your work?
We are only present in person in 1 location now, and the person representing us is a volunteer living in that location and performing the work CHEERing has trained her to do. We check in with her regularly as she weighs, and measures babies and follows their nutrition. Otherwise, we are very busy creating online training for the people who are still working in the camps, and for the families with babies living in the camps. We have created educational messaging around infant feeding and COVID-19 in English, French, Arabic, Farsi, and Greek. We have also created a YouTube channel. Breastfeeding is even more important during an epidemic and we want people to get that message and be sure to support and encourage them to breastfeed as much as possible from a distance.
What does your current day-to-day look like?
Always very busy. We are learning new skills and working on getting the message out via as many social media channels as possible. We are also working on our training program for our own volunteer team and making new materials.
How do you think it will affect the project long-term?
We realise more than ever before the importance of training people inside the camps and communities to do this work themselves with the tools we provide them with. We will focus on this more than ever afterwards.
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