National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR) in collaboration with UNICEF, Hyderabad field office, is training over 28.33 lakh community leaders through online programs to practice social behaviors required to control the transmission of COVID-19 cases in villages in association with the governments of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
The online training program was initiated along the lines of a detailed risk communication plan to build capacities of panchayat raj institutions (PRI), self-help groups (SHG), National Service Scheme (NSS) officials, volunteers and community radio stations (CRS) on the role that they can play in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in their groups and village communities.
The programme is being conducted via a digital app for enabling video conference calls with district master trainers from rural development, Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) of Telangana, officials of National Service Scheme (NSS), health functionaries of AP and community radio stations.
“We recognized the exceptional role that leaders of PR and village organizations in dealing with the crisis of COVID19 by disseminating reliable information. Hence, we decided to build their capacities by endowing them with facts about COVID19, common symptoms, modes of transmission and key behaviours, among other things,” said NIRDPR Director-General W.R. Reddy.
“The response from the participants has been very encouraging and they in turn are communicating the messages further down to the panchayat level. Our training programmes extends to about two hours over video conference calls,” said director, Communication Resource Unit, and Head, Centre for Good Governance and Policy Analysis (CGG&PA), Gyanmudra.
