CO-WASH Innovation Fund COVID19 disease has been identified in China and later declared as a global pandemic by WHO on March 11, 2020. In Somalia and Somaliland, the first case of the disease was reported in March 2020, and since then, the government authorities implemented measures including movement restrictions, banning all community gathering, closing schools and other religious facilities. Somalia has over three million internally displaced communities (OCHA, Somalia) and over 79% of Somalis are living either below or near the internationalpoverty line (NDP-9, Somalia). The majority of IDPs live in overcrowded settlements with weakened infrastructure, insufficient access to WASH facilities and inaccessible health services. Since later last year, the locust manifestation and floods destroyed majority posture and farmland deteriorating the already weakened communities.
Somalia is one of the worst prepared countries in the world to contain the disease. WHO recommends the use of personal protective equipment, frequent handwashing and social distance to contain COVID19. Oxfam Somalia works with communities to promote these critical measures and raise awareness of communities on COVID19. Thissupport requires a close engagement with communities and health volunteers. However, since the first COVID19 case was declared in Somalia, we have limited our community contact and tried to see possible options to provide Real-time support to our communities. This included using a mobile-based application, Well Beyond, to provide COVID19 prevention and containment training. This trail was found to be effective and efficient. We are now proposing the scale up the same approach to expand to include other training including hygiene promotions, WASHCO training, WASH <(>&<)> Protection related training.
COVID19 has changed our traditional ways of living, working and our regular ways of implementing programs. For ownership and sustainability, it is critical to ensure communities' involvement in program design and implementation. In COVID19 environment, this can only be possible by using technologies to deliver training, information and collect feedback.
We wish to deploy critically needed information into the Oxfam Somalia regions of work through the Well Beyond App. This life-saving mobile technology sends interactive COVID-19 and Sanitation and Hygiene training material tothe community based health voluneteers. The technology will fill knowledge gap between COVID-19 recommendations and the tools and knowledge available in the remote, rural places. It serve by providing vital training material, guidance on handwashing stations, surface hygiene, sanitation and real-time chat support, and other tools to help communities prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the sametime, Oxfam Somalia will be able to track training completions and collect data on the solution’s success. This will allow the Oxfam field team to continuously interact with our beneficiaries and community health volunteers.

The UN Economic Commission for Africaprojected more than hundreds of thousands of Africans could lose their lives due to COVID-19. The Somali government, in alignment with the WHO, emphasizes that basic, preventative measures by individuals and communities remain the most powerful tool to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but delivering this critical information has been a challenge, as the movement within countries is very limited, and social distancing guidelines prohibit large group trainings in person. The Well Beyond App will allow us to provide this crucial guidance to our CHVs and support to our communities, even though we aren’t physically able to be there.