The COVID-19 crisis has led to a flood of written material and webinars. Most international coverage of the crisis in low- and middle-income countries concentrates on the impact of the disease and the official response, for example the impact of governments’ lockdown measures on citizens. What often goes missing is an examination of human agency – how individuals, communities and grassroots organisations respond to the new challenges, both of the disease and the official response, and how this agency is emerging or changing in its nature. The Emergent Agency in a Time of COVID-19 initiative looks at this missing element.
What we will offer is an opportunity to explore questions such as these:
What individual and collective agency is emerging among low-income households and communities across different groups at the intersection of multiple inequalities, precarious and informal workers, and non-state actors, as they respond to the health pandemic and its economic and social fallout?
How can these experiences reshape how donors and governments understand needs, vulnerabilities and agency, and options to reduce emerging or entrenching inequalities?
How can these examples inform how CSOs and CBOs amplify impacts through policy influencing and other scaling efforts?
To influence practice meaningfully, we are keen to harness the interest we have seen from academics, activists, CSOs, INGOs, thinktanks and others from across the globe to collectively, as a loose network, make sense of and learn from what is emerging out of the Covid crisis. We hope you will join us on this journey.
Learn more about the impact of the project: