{"id":22404,"date":"2021-07-19T11:54:56","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T09:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bioforce.org\/?p=22404"},"modified":"2021-07-28T11:48:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T09:48:07","slug":"2020-adapting-and-responding-to-the-covid-19-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bioforce.org\/en\/2020-adapting-and-responding-to-the-covid-19-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"2020: adapting and responding to the covid-19 crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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2020: adapting and responding to the covid-19 crisis<\/h1>\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n 13 July 2021<\/span> \n <\/div>\n
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In our centres in Lyon and Dakar, in our projects in the Central African Republic, on our territory or online: in 2020, we first adapted to mitigate the impact of the crisis on our students, then quickly mobilised our know-how to help manage this global crisis.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n

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Adapting to the crisis: a record shift in our training centres<\/h2>\n\t\t

On Thursday 12th March 2020, the President of the French Republic announced the closure of educational establishments. Two days later, an identical measure was taken by the President of Senegal. On\u00a0 Tuesday 17th March, all the roughly 300 students in the Europe and Africa centres shifted to remote learning: an e-learning platform was made operational for each group, the trainers, who change week on\u00a0 week, were briefed on how to use it and worked relentlessly to tailor their teaching and content, a hotline was set up to deal with questions and manage the inevitable technical glitches. A few weeks on, even our \u2018field practice\u2019 (full-scale humanitarian simulation operations) was conducted online.<\/p>\n

In July, then again in September, the students were able to come back to the centres, which had been adjusted to comply with the new health order. In Lyon, at the end of October, everything came to a half once again with the announcement of a new lockdown, however guidelines from the Department of Labour quickly enabled students to return in person \u2018if the course cannot be delivered online\u2019 (requiring access to technical equipment, tools or machinery) and to reduce the drop-out risk.<\/p>\n

The partial return to on-site teaching was a huge relief to everyone: \u201cOver the first few months of the course, online, I did everything possible to make sure I didn\u2019t drop out, but it\u2019s hard to stay focussed on your screen seven hours a day.\u201d (Guillaume, training to become a logistics manager), \u201cThe quality of the e-learning courses was good, but that doesn\u2019t replace the need to see our trainers in\u00a0 person.\u201d (Laura, studying to become a manager in Humanitarian\u00a0 Logistics & Facility Management). All the students fitted in with the exceptional circumstances and were aware of the efforts made by the teaching teams, that remained attentive to suggestions and feedback given by the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether the course is run online or on-site, the most important thing is that the quality of teaching remains the same as previous years and\u00a0 that the diploma holds the same value. That was on everyone\u2019s mind,\u00a0 and we were reassured at length about this point.\u201d (Beno\u00eet, studying to become a Humanitarian Logistics Manager). The feedback from the students\u2019 end-of-year assessments served to confirm that e-learning did not have a negative impact.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

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Responding to the crisis<\/h2>\n\t\t

Back in March 2020, both in France and in the countries where we\u00a0 operate, all the teams stepped up their efforts to offer support and capacity building to front-line workers. In Bangui, for example, they circulated basic prevention and protection messages within communities and distributed long-awaited masks.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Response #1: Stop Covid-19 made available in 3 weeks<\/h2>\n\t\t