Days of Hope in Times of COVID

Days of Hope are activities and events proposed by Landscapes of Hope community members to bring together civil society actors from different sectors to discuss and to explore possibilities for joint action, or to act collaboratively to address some of the difficult problems currently challenging our world in areas such as freedom of expression, social and economic marginalization, forced displacement and migration, gender inequality and racism and hate speech.

In 2020, Landscapes of Hope announced the results of the third and last round for its “Days of Hope”. Four activities from Mexico, Lebanon, Egypt and the United Kingdom were supported in this round one. This year, the call for application focused on activities that utilize the cross sector collaboration in order to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. All members of the Landscapes of Hope Community were invited to apply for this round by submitting ideas for activities that bring together civil society actors across different sectors with the aim of bringing the issue of cross sector collaboration to public attention. The selected activities are:

❖ Ambulante, Mexico: “Let it be law! Ensuring women reproductive rights in the age of corona”: A series of events that are taking place between October 19, 2020 to March 31, 2021 in the forms of: digital public screenings, educational screenings and screenings with national and local feminist and women’s rights collectives. The film (Let it be Law) will be screened accompanied by a discussion guide which highlights the films’ cinematic elements, contextualises its content to a young, Mexican audience, and provides entry points for teachers to guide conversations with students. Additionally, Ambulante are currently working on a wide social media campaign called “Let it be law!”, or #QueSeaLey

❖ War Child Lebanon: A community-based Peace Theatre that aims to promote the psychological wellbeing of children and youth confronted with difficult circumstances, both chronically and during a specific crisis. The aim of a psychosocial intervention is to foster the balance between the individual and his/her community, strengthening their respective abilities to cope with life. The event was postponed to take place from February to July 2021, due to the Beirut explosion and its aftermath.

❖ Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF) – Egypt: Provide safe and secure communication, storage and e-learning platforms customized for civil society organizations and ADEF partner spaces to enable the complete migration of activities online securely and independently. The platforms developed are – Rocket.Chat – Mattermost, Jitsi; Nextcloud; Bitwarden; and Open Project. ADEF also developed a call for applications offering a three- year grant supporting NGOs and CSOs to develop one or more of the abovementioned open source platforms that can respond to their work and needs.

❖ In Place of War, United Kingdom: A series of free online events “Change Maker Summit” across November 2020. The event featured stories, workshops and panel discussions led by artists and activists from around the world in collaboration with In Place of War’s network of creative change makers across 24 places of conflict and for specialists in healthcare, community food and technology.