Disaster Response United States Project #46138

Information Saves Lives: COVID-19 Response Fund

by Internews

Project Report | Mar 31, 2021
Protecting Our Local Partners from Mis- and Disinformation around COVID

By Erik Ortega | Private Sector Development Associate

Thank you for your generous support of Internews’ COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund. With the ongoing pandemic and a rise in vaccine hesitancy, support from donors like you is helping our local partners around the world build resiliency in the strained socioeconomic climate caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Our partners are continuing to provide fact checked information to vulnerable communities so that they can be better informed about protecting themselves and their families and how to access available services. For example, Internews is supporting its partners to dispel misinformation about vaccines by providing factual and reliable information about vaccine science and rollout services.

Over the past year, Internews' Information Saves Lives Rapid Response Fund has continued to provide financial and technical support to over 320 media outlets in around 68 countries in 135 languages. By giving media partners the tools to report on COVID-19, we are ensuring that journalists have the knowledge to report on health emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic as well as the capacity to publish fact-based information to targeted populations that are most at-risk.

In South Africa, Food for Mzansi, a digital news organization with a keen focus on rural and agricultural communities, worked with the guidance of Internews to create a comic strip to provide relevant COVID-19 information in a creative way to youth and adults with limited literacy. The comic strip included characters like Captain Stay Safe and Thandi, comic heroes who look out for them during the pandemic. Produced in 11 languages, the comic strip helps both children as well as adults better understand the severity of the virus and the guidelines to protect themselves. By providing information to underserved agricultural communities in South Africa, our partner media organization is helping farmers and their families safely navigate these uncertain times during the pandemic.

In Colombia, SentARTE is using their multimedia skills to inform indigenous communities, specifically indigenous women and children, about the current status of the pandemic and how to survive the physical and psychological impacts of COVID-19. By producing infographics, animations, and podcasts, our partner organization amplifies issues related to indigenous rights and also works with Internews’ Health Journalism Network to attend to concerns around the pandemic and ensure that residents of isolated communities can access fact-checked information about how to stay safe and access health services.

In the United Kingdom, Tinig UK, an online news site for Filipino migrants, has been focusing on protecting vulnerable migrants who work in the healthcare field. Since the start of the pandemic, over 60 Filipino healthcare workers have been reported to have died from the coronavirus. Tinig UK founder, Liezel, aims to counter misinformation in Filipino migrant communities, elevate the voices of underserved migrants to the broader nation, and address any concerns related to the pandemic, such as vaccine hesitancy.

Thank you for your support of our mission to keep communities informed during this difficult time. Producing and disseminating accurate and verified information about the pandemic is key to keeping the most vulnerable healthy and safe. If you have any questions or would like to know more about our COVID response work, please do not hesitate to reach out.

We look forward to sharing more information about our partners and projects that have been made possible with your donations.

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Dec 1, 2020
Providing lifesaving information on COVID

By Salma Samad | Director, Private Development

On behalf of Internews, we would like to thank you for your generous support of our COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund. With a global spike in coronavirus cases, support from donors like you is helping our local partners around the world to keep disseminating fact checked information to vulnerable communities that are susceptible to misinformation so that they can better protect themselves and their families as well as know what services are available and where and how to access those services.

Over the past 8 months, Internews' Information Saves Lives Rapid Response Fund has continued to provide financial and technical support to over 180 media partners in around 70 countries in 110 languages, giving them the tools to report on COVID-19 to underserved populations. We are ensuring that journalist partners have the knowledge to report on health emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic as well as the capacity to publish fact-based information to targeted populations that are most at-risk.

For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),Action for Vulnerable Women and Children (ASFEV) has received support from Internews’ Rapid Response Fund to report on COVID-19 awareness and prevention in the local Fizi language to the women in the Sud-Kivu province. Enacted as a program to protect the rights of rural women and victims of sexual assault, ASFEV now distributes radios, 2GB memory cards, and masks for community members to learn more about the way the virus spreads and its symptoms and the preventive measures that should be taken to protect themselves against COVID-19. By giving rural women accurate and relevant information on the current state of the pandemic, ASFEV is not only containing the spread of the pandemic, but it is also closing the information gap for women in these male dominated communities and increasing gender equality in DRC. To read more on ASFEV’s impressive work, please click here.

In Haiti, a local online news media outlet, AyiboPost, has received support from Internews’ Rapid Response Fund to increase COVID-19 coverage to over 500,000 of its readers. The online news outlet is conducting extensive reporting informing the community with up to date news about the current status of the pandemic and its impact on day to day life. The outlet is also teaching its journalists to stay safe and better protect themselves while reporting in the midst of a pandemic. If you want to see what kind of content AyiboPost produces, take a look at their website here.

As for our work in the Balkans, our partner the Bosnian news portal klix.ba is providing accurate quantitative data on the pandemic to the public and the government as there is a dearth of credible information in the country. With the rise of COVID-19, it has been more important than ever to gather factual data and generate visual information that maps out the spread of the virus, capturing the number of cases and the number of deaths in various regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina. To look at some of the graphical representations produced by klix.ba that make it easier for the public to understand health information, please click here.

Thank you donors for your support towards our mission to keep communities informed during this difficult time as we navigate the pandemic. Producing and disseminating accurate and verified information about the pandemic is key to keeping the most vulnerable parts of the world healthy and safe. If you have any questions or would like to know more about our COVID response work, please do not hesitate to reach out.

We look forward to sharing more information about our projects and partners that have been made possible with your contributions.

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Aug 5, 2020
COVID-19 Project Update from Internews

By Erik Ortega | Private Sector Development Associate

A radio journalist from Ndele, C.A.R.

On behalf of Internews, we would like to thank you for your generous support towards our COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund. Contributions from donors like you are helping communities around the globe access the information they need to know how to protect themselves, how their local government is responding, and how to safely acquire food, health care, and other services.

Since the launch of our Information Saves Lives Rapid Response Fund back in March, Internews has been providing financial and technical assistance to over 80 journalists and media partners around the world, enabling them to provide timely information on COVID-19 to underserved populations. We are in the process of supporting an additional 90 partners globally so that they can offer relevant and reliable COVID-19 related information to keep their communities informed, safe and resilient.

One local partner, Abdullahi, works with Radio Gargaar, a radio station that reaches around 200,000 residents in Garissa County in Kenya. With the help of Internews, Abdullahi is able to extend his radio program from twenty minutes to an hour and provide in-depth information about COVID-19 related topics, such as demystifying rumors, translating health and scientific information from the WHO and government for residents in the Dadaab refugee camp, and holding call-in radio shows to answer questions from concerned people in Garissa County. Aside from his exuberant work with COVID response, Abdullahi also makes sure to incorporate dramas and entertainment into radio programming as a distraction for camp residents facing fearful conditions.

In Ecuador, journalist and editor, Isabel, works with GK, a media outlet she co-founded to raise awareness about women’s rights, the environment, and indigenous rights. Since the rise of the pandemic, she has been using GK to highlight the increased incidence of domestic violence against women to ensure that women facing abuse in their households are still getting help despite the shift in attention to COVID-19. Isabel is creating a WhatsApp group chat that will provide victims of domestic violence access to resources that can help them escape these abusive situations. Aside from Isabel’s dedicated work with women, she is crafting social media content and newsletters filled with useful resources on COVID, for example, preventative measures to care of oneself and rumor tracking to dispel misinformation around the novel virus (such as, unproven remedies).

If you would like to read more about some of our other local partners and their work, click here.

In Southeast Asia, Internews has created a website for all things related to COVID-19, such as blog posts, news from around the globe, and social media bulletins. The bulletins focus on key trends in social media posts collected in target language groups and aim to provide tools and resources to support journalists and community workers response to misinformation, thus helping to reduce the spread of rumors and misinformation in social media.For the bulletins, data is being collected in eight languages across Asia, including Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Thai, Bahasa Indonesian, Hindi, Khmer, and Urdu. The analysis is based on thousands of rumors collected primarily on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. If you would like to read more about our work in Asia, click here.

Again, thank you for your support towards our mission to keep communities informed during this crucial time as people need accurate information to stay informed and access needed service. If you have any questions or would like to know more about our COVID response work, please do not hesitate to reach out.

We look forward to sharing more of our projects with you in the future.

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