With the outbreak of COVID-19 in India, life came to a standstill with the lockdown for curbing the spread of the virus or ‘flattening the curve’. With millions of lives at stake due to the public health crisis, the government, medical-health workers, police, essential service providers and civil society organizations and several groups came forward for frontline response to the pandemic and are taking continuous measures. Lives of people have been altered with implications beyond the health crisis leading to an economic and humanitarian crisis as well. Caritas India since its inceptions has been working for the upliftment of the poor and the marginalized. With its community development goals for creating sustained communities with its four Key Strategic Pillars of Empowerment Animation, Dialogue, Volunteerism and Sharing Communities; Caritas India is also at the forefront with the same vigour in its emergency response. Addressing the Health Emergency at such a vast scale with the limitations of strict guidelines under this pandemic has altered the functioning of the organization for providing the emergency response in its traditional mechanism with the mission of reaching out to the people at the brim of chaos and suffering.

Caritas India and its team of humanitarian aid and development workers quickly adapted to the unforeseen circumstances with a lockdown in a rapid response of 48 hours which led to the planning of how the organization would function like a cloud organization to address the pandemic crisis. The task at hand was not just reaching out to the most vulnerable and marginalized but also rapidly operationalize the safeguarding policy of the organization by managing the human resources of the organization for the emergency response. Being a humanitarian organization, working from home is not easy, but efficient planning led to gave a new dimension of Caritas Online taking its own philosophy of the Strategic Pillars and laying out the code of ethics for working from home. 4 important strategies have been put in place which are as follows:

• Using Technology for Empowering Teams- During these difficult times when physical distancing is a must, the CI team has connected virtually and are working on ‘real-time basis’ to carry out the emergency response. They are working from home using office gadgets like laptops or mobile phones which are connected to the main server managed at the Head Office in Delhi. Microsoft Teams has been adopted as the primary tool as for its user-friendly features’ employees are provided with a login ID ad password. All meetings, discussions, and planning are done virtually by the teams. This has enabled to discuss, deliberate and brainstorms together by keeping safe and maintaining the much-needed social distancing even virtually by working from home.
• Partners engaging with local governance- As per the guidelines of the Ministry of the Home Affairs to follow the protocol of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, the partners engage with the local governance under the District Magistrate to work at the grass root level and provide emergency relief. For this, our 174 partners across all States and Union Territories of India have been assigned the task to partner with the local district management for emergency response in their districts. All the relief work is being followed up by the Caritas India team and there is a continuous dialogue among CI and its partners to reach people at the grassroots. Together we are synchronizing our important role to reach out to the people at the margins by distributing food and essential items, spreading awareness about the pandemic, providing PPE material, helpline services and so on.
• Engaging Volunteers– Responding to a pandemic cannot be done by a handful of people particularly when there are lockdown rules and so on. In order to expand our reach, ensuring human resources became important. Volunteers across the country have joined hands with Caritas India to provide emergency response in these difficult times. Some of the tasks that are being done through the volunteers are procurement of essential items, documentation, photography, on-site relief distribution, propagating the IEC material developed by the Communications/ IT Team on social media to spread awareness about the precautions to be undertaken and other relevant information about the pandemic. Such volunteer engagements have been always considered important by Caritas India and at this time, it has made the emergency response effective.
• Networking with potential donors and Collaborations- Using virtual platforms to reach out to the potential donors, stakeholders has been an important part of the initiative. Networking for monetary support for providing emergency relief has been an important aspect to ensure that timely and continued support can be provided to the people at the margins across the country.

As Caritas India took a timely call to alter the work practices, it has been able to play a significant role and the strategic pillars guided the planning and implementation of the emergency interventions initiated by Caritas India by opening up to dialogue, networking and collaborating (sharing communities), volunteerism and using virtual platforms (empowerment animation). All the employees adhere to the policies of the organization even as they work from home with complete ethics and commitment. These ‘Work from Home Ethics’ have been really helpful for all the employees to cope up with the changes that this pandemic has brought to their lives and continue with the humanitarian relief work.