Urgent support for women during COVID19 Crisis

COVID-19 have been a great challenge for Calicanto, but also an opportunity to approach our beneficiaries in a different way and reconfirm that even when a woman in social vulnerability has managed to improve her life, this does not distance her from all the ups and downs of a crisis like this, quite the contrary, puts her at greater risk.

Like most companies and organizations in Panama, we had to quickly adapt to new ways of working. With the aim of safeguarding the health and well-being of the team and of the 28 CAPTA women who were at that time, close to the last week of Training, we decided to adopt the teleworking modality from March 13, suspending visits and in-person care in our HQ.

This implied a complete change to our operation, including the suspension of our plans for the following months: educational programs, psychological care, workshops for companies and fundraising events. However, the foundation team did not hesitate a second to implement digital tools to communicate with beneficiaries, donors, volunteers and trainers. In less than a week we already had a committee made up of members of the Board of Directors and Collaborators with the same north: to provide direct assistance to all the graduates of our CAPTA program and their families.

To do this, we began first with a diagnostic phase, conducting a surveys of all our graduates to find out their status during quarantine. This enabled us to realize that the majority had lost their sources of income, making it difficult for them to access basic resources to support their families.

This crisis revealed to us the different contexts in which women struggled during the pandemic and how their situation is intertwined with our own reality. That is why we decided to launch the second phase of our work: helping them stay home and stay safe through a Weekly Rapid Assistance Plan. 

We contacted Banco General to issue Certificate Cards that could be delivered to each CAPTA girl in order to make weekly deposits so that they could purchase essential products. This methodology is not only efficient because aid can come recurrently during the crisis, without having direct contact; but also because it allows them to choose the products that best suit their needs.

As of today, thanks to the support of our donors, almost 400 Certificate cards have been delivered for an amount of $180 each to CAPTA families in Colón, Panamá Oeste, Panamá, Coclé and Chiriquí to buy food and medicines that were already in short supply. This amount was divided and deposited weekly for 5 weeks to each card, until completing $180 dollars. 

It hurts us to communicate that we already have CAPTA women with COVID-19, and one of them physically left, leaving a family of 7 members, equally infected. That is why we have decided to provide timely support by opening the ESTHER fund to specifically support CAPTA women who are infected with COVID-19.

At the same time, our psychological support and training services have not stopped. This speaks to the enormous commitment of the collaborators, members of the Board of Directors and CAPTA trainers who have put all their efforts using digital tools to bring psychological attention and psycho-emotional skills workshops to women. The girls have been able to share with the entire team of trainers through Zoom, receiving workshops on Emotional Intelligence, Self-care, Health and Well-being, Poetry, Group Therapies, Mental Health, among others. We currently have an average of 130 women who register per session using their cell phones and we want more to do so, but we are aware that the digital gap  in Panama is real; more than 90% do not have internet and a computer at home, and even then, this has not limited them and they have decided to use their data to continue training. We still have a great job to do in Panama to reduce this latent inequality that exists.

That is why our plans continue, we have defined a third phase of action, which consists of partnering with companies, universities and other NPOs to train graduates in tools that allow them to access the labor market once the quarantine is over. This involves having the knowledge and access to the technological equipment necessary to develop their skills. For this, it will also be necessary to analyze the demand of the moment, so that all our actions are in accordance with the reality of the country.

Likewise, we have started planning the virtual version of our CAPTA program, through which we hope to train 80 women over the next 6 months in new psycho-emotional skills and entrepreneurship, so that they can face the challenges of this crisis, rejoining the country's economy.

The future is uncertain for everyone, especially for NPOs that rely heavily on private donations and fundraising events. We know that difficult times will come and that we will have to continue to change, but our mission to empower the most vulnerable women will continue to be our main objective.