As the world fights back against the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects globally, we applaud the heroic contributions of our medical personnel and ask: How can we assist?

 

FDR  experts have been working on in-crisis and post-crisis responses to health epidemics for over 20 years and have built excellent relationships in the communities where we have worked most notably in Africa. Part of the strength of our experience in response to the Ebola crisis, from few years back, was the community-based responses that we were able to initiate, including assessing most vulnerable groups; identifying needs; collecting and analyzing gender disaggregated data/gender variables in crisis and packaging it into proposals for funding; as well as utilizing data analysis to inform future response and recovery strategies. This was made possible because of the trust and confidence the community had in our staff and in our work. 

 

FDR has focused on providing data research and analysis that fosters collaboration between multilateral organizations, government and peer agencies to learn from the 2014 - 2016 Ebola response in Sierra Leone; and is ready to assist in mitigating the on-going impact of the deadly COVID-19 disease.

 

To prepare for future epidemics and disasters, FDR argues that resilience needs to be built starting at the community level. This cannot be accomplished without an analysis of the work to-date. For this reason, FDR has prioritized operational research and learning from the Ebola response to provide timely response and recovery services to the international community, especially in light of the government of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy and GBA+ analysis.