Hope for Communities mostly runs projects that are more focused on long term investment and community development. However, as coronavirus was impacting the whole world, we saw the huge impact it was having on communities like the one where we ran our centre. The small amount of money that comes into certain families in the community for example through day labouring was no longer coming in. The opportunity arose for us to apply for some funding which was specifically for helping to provide food for those impacted by Covid. It was a great way to check in and connect with the community at a time when the centre was closed. It was a good opportunity to build relationships with some of the community leaders, as they were able to help us support the most vulnerable families. It was heart breaking to hear that for some of the families, the food that we gave was the only food that they had eaten in days.

At the time when the community centre had to be closed due to Covid, Hope for Communities explored how we could use our skills and resources to continue to serve our community and the wider communities in the region. We noticed that around the world resources were being made available online for people to use at home whilst isolated and in lockdown. We realized
that these resources weren’t as widely available in the Kurdish language. And so as a team we made a number of Youtube videos to support people and families whilst at home during lockdown. We put up English Language classes, exercise videos and crafts and game ideas to support children and their families in lockdown. These videos have met the original purpose of serving the needs of a community at a time of lockdown, but also have remained available online for people to access, at the time of writing this report our videos have had over 6000 views in total.