Covid19. Resources to: Inform your children, Guide your community

This blog is primarily for those with young children and for church leaders in some of the poorer nations

A good friend of mine, Susie Howe (wife of Jem, an elder in the Community Church, Putney, part of the Newfrontiers family of churches), has extensive experience of working in Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe and several other sub-Saharan countries. She is trained to a high level in medical practice (she was a nursing sister in one of the London teaching hospitals). Her experience showed her that the advice being given in European countries and North America is unable to be followed in many of the poorer environments in which many of you work. So she has prepared 4 documents for you to consider (in 3 languages and 2 formats) that may be more applicable in different cultures. You can download them here.

The two formats (Word and pdf) are to help you have maximum flexibility in how you use them. For instance, you may wish to simplify the language, add your logo, give contact details or adapt them to your own reality and situation, such as in contexts where covid19 is being falsely attributed to witchcraft.

Feel free to pass these on to any who may be able to use them. They do not require any credit or origin to be stated.

Finally, Susie suggests you ask those in a position of church leadership

a) to consider how they can set up hand-washing stations in the communities around their churches
b) to do what they can to ensure that particularly those who are the most economically and socially vulnerable in their congregations and communities have soap and access to sound information.

This will probably need to be shared by trusted peers by word of mouth and person to person.