Changemakers of the world,
The world today looks very different from the very same world just a few weeks ago. The current COVID-19 outbreak is severely disrupting not only the way we work or come together to socialise, but it is shaking all our most solid foundations, challenging us to find new roots to ground ourselves and thrive in this crisis. We know this is a difficult time for many of you – it is for our community as well: we are concerned for the wellbeing of our loved ones, especially the most vulnerable members of our families and communities; we are grappling with the anxiety of financial insecurity because many of our projects and events have been postponed or cancelled; and we are on an emotional roller coaster swinging between moments of positivity and confidence and feelings of sadness, isolation, and overwhelm.
Since it will be weeks and months before the world may return to some sort of “normality” (where we hope “normality” stands for a new reality built around a more harmonious and synergistic relationship between humans and non-human species), we would like to share with you our response to the novel coronavirus as a community as well as share useful resources for changemakers around the globe.
Our response as a team and as a community:
As changemakers, we have a strong instinct and impulse to “act” and “fix” things, but in this case, the best thing we can all do is to adapt our normal routine to stay at home as much as possible. In our core team, we follow and comply with the official WHO guidelines (and our own country’s) on how to protect ourselves and minimise the spread of the novel coronavirus. We are limiting our social interactions and practicing social distancing, which are the main actions we can take to slow the spread of the virus and ensure our national healthcare systems have the means to assist those who need intensive care and treatment. Moreover, we have taken the following actions:
- Solidarity check-in calls for the ChangemakerXchange core team to support each other.
- Solidarity huddles for the ChangemakerXchange community members to bond.
- Webinars to share our knowledge and expertise hosting and facilitating virtual events.
- Training-of-Trainers summits for our facilitators currently on hold.
- Regular ChangemakerXchange summits for new changemakers currently on hold.
We keep monitoring the developments of the situation closely and may take additional steps to ensure the wellbeing of our team and community members.
Our gifts for you:
Even if we cannot be together in the same place right now, we believe we are #bettertogether in our effort to bring about positive change in the world. This is why we would like to share a few resources to help you cope with these uncertain times and become even more resilient and committed to your changemaker purpose.
1. CXC Virtual Facilitation Toolkit
We have gathered our knowledge and expertise, as well as all our favourite tips and tricks when it comes to facilitating virtual gatherings. This PDF document (freshly updated!) is available for everyone and we invite you to share it with anyone who might need support in their virtual facilitation.
2. CXC COVID-19 Toolkit (NEW!)
We have developed a new toolkit to act as a guidance to adapt our ways of working together as a team and continue to serve our community of changemakers. This PDF document is available for anyone and we invite you to share it with those who might benefit from our experience keeping our team and community safe and healthy.
3. Wellbeing support from Recipes for Wellbeing
Our official wellbeing partner Recipes for Wellbeing has kindly put together a curated selection of “wellbeing recipes” – activities you can practice at home alone or with your family and flatmates to boost your wellbeing and emotional resilience. Thanks to the help of many volunteers, including some of our own community members, the blog post has been translated in several languages:
- English: Wellbeing in the time of COVID-19
- French: Le bien-être aux temps du COVID-19
- Italian: Il benessere ai tempi del coronavirus
- Mandarin: 新型冠状病毒时期的幸福感处方
- German: Wohlbefinden in Zeiten von Coronavirus
- Spanish: Bienestar en tiempos de COVID-19
4. Working remotely
Our community members YSI and tbd* have kindly shared useful resources on how to work remotely, which you can access below:
We hope these resources are helpful for you and your teams. Please help us spread them with the world so that all changemakers around the world can continue to work effectively in the service of others. Finally, many of our community members are working on more collaboration ideas and we will share any relevant resources that might emerge from their co-creation.
Stay healthy and keep changing the world!
The ChangemakerXchange Team