Religious actors are at the forefront of the COVID-19 response, advocating for measures to flatten the curve and leveraging their reach and trust at the country level to mitigate impacts of the pandemic (e.g. food security, social protection, livelihoods). One of the major challenges is a lack of coordination between efforts. In addition, many religious actors and faith-based organisations struggle to achieve to be part of the decision-making process. Alongside this, there is often a lack of funding accessible to local religious actors. Multistakeholder partnerships, such as PaRD, can play a crucial role in these efforts by continuing to work with policy makers to develop response options that support inclusive recovery for the most vulnerable populations.
Based on assessment by the Word Bank, the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction1. With millions of people who were already struggling with poverty facing increasing inequalities and injustice; measures to combat the long-term
Background: What has PaRD done so far?
To date, PaRD’s responses have focused on multi-stakeholder dialogues and discussions. This has included: 1. A dossier on religious actors’ response to COVID-19: Religion in times of COVID-19
2. PaRD Webinar on COVID-19 response, April 2020
3. Virtual PaRD Annual Forum sessions on COVID-19, focusing on strengthening opportunities for funding COVID-19 responses, September 2020
4. A series of critical dialogues on Visioning a Just World Post-COVID19: Religion, Sustainable Development and Gender Justice that focuses on the impact of the pandemic on gender equality, launched in September 2020
5. Geneva Peace Week Podcast – addressing the funding challenges experienced by local religious/faith-based organisations in different regions also emphasises these challenges, November 2020
Call for Proposals
In seeking to address the inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and in particular the negative impacts experienced by the most vulnerable populations, we invite PaRD work-streams to submit proposals for collaboration to respond to these specific issues. The available funding is 20.000 €. Proposals can be made by individual work-streams or as a joint effort between different work-streams.
We look for the following in the application:
1. Innovation
2. Collaboration
3. Multi-stakeholder partnerships
4. Engagement with religious actors in the Global South
5. Evidencing
Deadline: 15.02.2021 Submission: info@pard.international
