Adapting to COVID-19: Seven Stories of IRC’s Response

Back in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic started to affect people’s lives and caused massive disruption to families, societies, and economies all over the world. Our teams, across all countries, regions, emergency, and technical units, have worked tirelessly to adapt to COVID-19 and the associated government restrictions. The pandemic has affected each of the countries where the IRC operates, many of which were already experiencing complex emergencies or have encountered devastating new crises in the past year.

The IRC report entitled “Adapting to COVID-19: Seven Stories of IRC’s Response” tells a few of the many inspiring stories of how the IRC and partners have risen to this historic humanitarian challenge. It features seven specific stories from the Middle East, Yemen, Cameroon, DR Congo, Colombia, Uganda, and Pakistan and highlights the extraordinary dedication of teams to continuously adapt and improve their programs, their collaboration across sectors and with partners and their testing of new approaches including low- and high-tech solutions to reach out to communities. Changes that were forced upon teams and clients opened new opportunities for remote or adapted delivery of services to vulnerable populations, many of which are still applicable today and will be further tested beyond the peak of the COVID-19 crisis, such as: Colombia’s telemedicine strategy, remote methods for early child development in the Middle East, home-based education in Pakistan, new cash delivery methods in Yemen.