Updated Monday, 16 March 2020

Things are shifting hourly as the global response accelerates and African countries see more infections. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national disaster and announced a range of extraordinary measures. The Government of Rwanda has taken aggressive action to curb the virus and other African countries are also responding.

There is a lot of information out there, so we will keep this brief. Harambee is being guided by the simple rules of Be Safe, Be Smart, Be Kind and here are 10 actions we are taking:

BE SAFE
To slow the spread of infection, worldwide guidelines say we have to keep a safe distance from others (called social distancing) and also avoid large gatherings (of over 100 people). This means:

1. To protect our network of work-seekers, we will suspend all face-to-face work-seeker services and work-readiness interventions for the next 30 days in our centres and partner facilities.
2. To protect our people, we will suspend all domestic and international travel and cancel meetings of 100+ people for the next 30 days. We will further enable remote work as much as possible in line with school closings.
3. To protect our partners, Harambee will cancel external events for the next 30 days.

BE SMART
We can respond to this pandemic by knowing the facts and creating new ways of working. This means:

4. Creative ways to support work-seekers on the phone, online, and on our mobi-site. We will ask government and business to help us make this affordable and accessible.
5. New ways of working for our people and our partners with more happening virtually and remotely.
6. Many ways to share facts, daily. We will be a trusted source of information for our network of young people, our partners, and our team.

BE KIND
Our Harambee values and our “Work for Work” strap-line will help us stay busy and be compassionate to all. This means:

7. Keep our teams healthy by making sure they know how to avoid infection and are treated well if they are infected.
8. Protect the confidentiality of anyone who wants to ask a question, share information or raise concerns.
9. Live our values and remember to “Work for Work” when we are asked to step up and to lead others in our network, in our teams, and in our country.

CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT:
10. Remember that #changeistheonlyconstant. Things will keep changing, and we will have to do the same.

others and avoid large gatherings (100+ people).