Paper short abstract:

Study focuses on women’s adaptation and response including awareness programmes about sanitation/health, and initiation of food and mask distribution in the communities. Meanwhile NGO deals with decreased funding and learning to work remotely and virtually in an area that requires field immersion.

Paper long abstract:

NGO RGMVP organises rural women in Uttar Pradesh, India, into Self Help Groups for initiating financial inclusion using the platform for layering health and livelihood interventions. COVID-19 impacted the activities and scope of SHGs, the larger context of its functions, and the operations at the organisational level. Social distancing measures made group meetings, the mainstay of the programme, untenable. Severe lockdown restrictions with curb in movement of goods and services, closures of factories and construction activities, decline in service sector, severely impacted livelihoods and incomes, and resultant male urban to rural migration changed gender dynamics in villages for women otherwise operating as heads of households in absence of husbands.

SHGs were able to reorganise quickly to attend to the new normal. This included mask making and distribution, women taking the role of spreading awareness (in person and through telephone helplines) about hand washing, social distancing, about COVID-19, its prevention, symptoms, and testing. Grain banks and donations of meal packages were initiated for vulnerable families. Women rural frontline health workers (the Accredited Social Heath Activists) played a pivotal role in testing, screening and provision of drugs during pandemic along with regular reproductive and child health services.

New challenges emerged for the organisation. Field research and evaluations became difficult due to restrictions in travel. National economic depression limited donor funding, closing down several projects and prompting layoffs. When immersion in the field is key to learning and outcomes, virtual connections and distance/remote working for NGOs will take time to develop effectively.