As we are at the end of the Lockdown 4.0 in India, it came as a shocking predictive revelation by Dr. V Ravi, Head, Neurovirology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), said: “By the year-end, up to 50 percent people (of India) will be infected (by the novel coronavirus).” Though social media has been a boon creating the necessary awareness on many issues to substantiate caution, it has time and again proved at this juncture of the pandemic to have reached out to the maximum number of people for generating awareness. At the same time, it also has created a viral fear across virtual platforms that has escalated the levels of panic amidst the relaxations that have been announced by the Government across the nation resulting in such a prediction by a leading Virologist who also has compared the devastation that the H1N1 virus had caused with a mortality rate of more than six percent globally with no lockdown being imposed and there “was no social media to create panic at that time”. As the COVID19 pandemic is being fought through various scientific phenomena, the ground reality has shown that there has been considered a growing collaboration of the government and CSOs to collectively reach out to the masses who are suffering. There has been a sigh of relief since the public and inter-state transportation including air travel has resumed partially that has helped the stranded to reach back to the closest possible safe zone or their homes after an intensive lockdown period.

With these transformative changes over 4 different versions of the Lockdown over a span of an entire quarter of 3 months in 2020 there have been broken systems that have been exposed which question our own approaches and lifestyle towards understanding wellbeing as a whole which primarily falls under the SDG 3.Caritas India just like many other humanitarian organizations who have been on the forefront to help the vulnerable has been continuously learning and changing itself to have a transformative emergency approach in order to avoid a circular approach and have a progressive leap into its way forward using its key strategic pillars of Empowering Animation, Dialogue, Volunteering & Sharing Communities. Post-Lockdown 4.0 it derives its action into the following categorically which is evidently linked to the strategic pillars:

KNOWLEDGE: Having involved with various partners across India in this fight against COVID19 Caritas India has acquired an exponential variety of learning and understandings that have posed as challenges and concerns which make her build better strategies and change in the operational approach of its emergency response. It has gathered experiential data from the extensive work done by her and her partners in its commitment to the joy of service. Caritas India has initiated a series of WEBINARS – the virtual platform for knowledge disseminating that has made her digital approach to adapt to technology to reach out to it’s partners and the frontline development workers in the field to have access to trainings and knowledge that happened through classroom model pre-COVID19 scenario. Caritas India has largely adapted to the use of KOBO collect app for all the emergency response data collection to map beneficiaries and identify vulnerable communities at time wherein we need to practice physical distancing by letting go off traditional mechanisms of survey forms with the help of its expert team of Emergency Response Team in the department of HADRR. Through such efforts, it has been trying evidently to emphasize the learning and changing approach for swift progress and maximum reach to encourage peoples to be more proactive human beings for the care and concern of the significant other.

ATTITUDE: Attitudes are important because they can guide thought, behavior, and feelings. People have an avid interest in understanding the causes of behavior, both theirs and others, and doing so helps us meet the important goals of other-concern and self-concern. If we can better understand how and why the other people around us act the way they do, then we will have a better chance of avoiding harm from others and a better chance of getting those other people to cooperate with and like us. And if we have a better idea of understanding the causes of our own behavior, we can better work to keep that behavior in line with our preferred plans and goals. In order to explore this Caritas India has started its intervention and joint ventures with other CSOs in conducting Rapid Research on different thematic interventions like Agriculture, Migration, Climate, etc in order to understand what has been affected due to COVID19 and what paradigm shift is needed to cope up. Research has always helped us to look qualitatively on what–how– why so that we are able to reach and resolve more what-how-why as we progress. This has helped us understand and change a lot of attitudes. Dialogue is one of the key areas of research as it is widely used with respondents. Similarly, Volunteering has been one of the key attitudinal changes that have been able to be capacitated and expanded by Caritas India and her partners to ensure more support comes from the people for the people. Psychosocial Support through tele-counseling is a complete volunteer-driven intervention that Caritas India has been able to deliver during the fight against COVID19 which again deals with helping people change perceptions and understand the battle against the pandemic in a more sensible way.

PRACTICE:  As we are at the end of Phase IV of the lockdown, Caritas India and her partners have been focused on continuously reaching out to people with food kits and necessary essential commodities. The aim is to reach out to the last mile, especially migrants, single-headed families, widows and widowers, people with no ration cards, daily wage earners, PLHIV, and PLWDs. This pandemic has led to a crisis of loss of livelihood which has added up to the already pre-existing factor of unemployment in the country from the last fiscal year which was a huge percentage due to mere negligence and unrealistic policies. As in that wasn’t enough that the troubled and the suffering had to face a novel virus out of nowhere which leads to focus majorly on few factors like food to fight hunger, kits to stay hygienic, and counseling to move ahead. All these 3 Rays (STAY-FIGHT-AHEAD) has been immensely supported by the efforts of trusted donor partners, individual foundations, individual donors and volunteers who have been able to mobilize resources, all of which has been successfully implemented through the participation and support of the communities which Caritas India and her partners have been reaching out to. Caritas India and her partners together have been able to directly support 5.1 Million people across the country through the distribution of various aspects of the 3 Rays as stated above.