The COVID19 pandemic is changing the way we live and has meant pausing a lot of our activities. However the big issues facing all of us, from achieving gender equality to taking serious action on climate change, haven’t gone away. In fact many of them will be exacerbated by the current situation.
Luckily there’s plenty of ways you can keep campaigning, keep learning and make change happen from home.
1. Read up
Right now, just staying at home as much as possible can save lives. So being an effective change-maker might mean getting to grips with teleconferences and other virtual ways of organising. Tom Baker from Save the Children is collecting resources in this thread all about getting the best from virtual workspaces, facilitating great zoom calls and adjusting to working from home.
There’s also loads of guides and tips about how to change up your organising in these new circumstances, here’s some of our favourites;
- The Mobilisation Lab – We need creative campaigning more than ever
- MRSS.com – Coronavirus Demands a Quantum Leap in Organising
- New/Mode – Digital Organising when we’re physically isolating
- Forward Action – Digital mobilisation
2. Skill up
One way to keep yourself active and prepared for campaigning is to keep learning about situations, developing new skills and thinking about new solutions. Luckily there is a wealth of free online resources and courses out there. One of the best and broadest of these is the UN’s SDG:Learn Gateway. SDG:Learn covers all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals. So whether you’re interested in reducing poverty or increasing access to education you can find something for you. You’ll find videos, blogs, lectures, quizzes and even full courses you can enrol in, from universities, development organisations, businesses and Civil society groups. So why not go explore.
You can learn how to take on the virus with these free courses and resources from the World Health Organisation. Or you could enrol in this rapid training course which covers the chain of infection, how infectious diseases are transmitted and how to break the chain of infection through concrete preventive actions. There’s a similar course from the London school of Hygiene and Tropical medicine too on FutureLearn.
If you’ve never heard of FutureLearn. Its an incredible place and a sort of one-stop shop for skilling up whilst you’re in lockdown (and beyond). They have 1000s of free courses on every topic you can imagine. Below are a few we think you might be interested in but you could also learn about art history or geology – knowledge is power!
- Organising for the SDGs
- Becoming a Digital Citizen
- Understanding Gender Inequality
- Sustainable Development
- Global Water Security
- Understanding Diversity and Inclusion
- Design a Feminist chatbot
- Environmental Humanities
3. Look out for new opportunities
COVID19 has disrupted so much good work, but it also means organisations and governments are pivoting resources and funding. You may find that you’re able to access new funding resources like this one from The Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR), who are looking to fund Arctivists (activists and artists) across the world who are responding to the outbreak of Covid-19 and its implications for human rights defenders, activism, and shrinking civic and political space. Paired activists and artists are able to apply for up to £3,000.
If you’re in the UK you could also check out this grant from the Author’s Emergency Fund. It’s open to all types of writers, illustrators, literary translators, scriptwriters, poets, journalists and others who have been financially impacted by the continuing crisis.
4. Keep following #FeelingRestless for more opportunities like this!
