PAFEC, UNICEF hold training workshop on COVID-19  

Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood (PAFEC) and UNICEF have organised a day-long training of Master Trainers from AFAQ and Momentous Schools on Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE), COVID-19 Response and Containment. 

The training sessions held on Monday and Tuesday in the Zonal Office of AFAQ in Faisalabad and in the Imperial Public School Lahore respectively. 35 Master Trainers attended the training sessions which aimed at creating create awareness about COVID-19 to stop the community spread of the virus. 

This training was part of the three-month COVID-19 prevention and mitigation campaign which PAFEC will run in four districts of Punjab (Faisalabad, Lahore, Multan and Gujranwala). 

Zohra Nisar, Communications Specialist, UNICEF and Khadija Khan, CEO PAFEC jointly made the presentation on the Risk Communication and Community Engagement, focusing on the role of frontline workers, key information about COVID-19, communication strategies, what and how to communicate, standard SoPs for prevention from COVID-19 which include hand-washing with soap for 20secods, social distancing and wearing masks and mask management. 

Key messages were also shared with the participants and they were also given an opportunity to discuss strategies to sensitize communities about the preventive measures to stop the spread of the virus and also to mitigate the situation in case of infections. 

All the participants actively participated in the discussion by asking key questions about what is COVID the virus, its symptoms, prevention and how to take care of infected family members, ways of transmission, the importance of quarantine and isolation, how myths and stigmatization can harm people, ways of providing support and having knowledge about health services.

Similar training sessions will be conducted in Multan and Gujranwala for Master Trainers and they will take it further training community influencers including religious leaders, head teachers, teachers, youth workers and community representative to spread the message as wide as possible to stop the spread of the virus.