COVID-19: Guidance for Faith Communities

"Faith leaders play a critical role in preparing their communities for the onset of the COVID-19 threat, in promoting healthy behaviour to reduce the spread, in tackling stigma and fear and in providing practical care for the most vulnerable." - Esther Lehmann-Sow, WVI Partnership Leader - Faith & Development

Faith communities and places of worship are at the centre of community life and have a role to play in guiding their members towards behaviour change and in providing spiritual, pastoral, and practical support. In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, faith communities and faith leaders are challenged to adapt their way of working to ensure that people are safe and protected, and to rapidly adjust their ways of meeting and worship in accordance with national guidelines and the stage of the pandemic. Created by World Vision International (WVI), this practical resource is designed to help faith leaders communicate and act in the COVID-19 context.

It outlines the following actions for faith leaders:

1. Protect your congregation - For example: Promote good hand and respiratory hygiene, including handwashing with soap at all gatherings, services, communions, or prayer/study meetings (such as by downloading and printing World Health Organization (WHO) posters on handwashing and display in all bathrooms and kitchens).
2. Give accurate information - For example: Remember that even repeating myths when saying they are untrue can inadvertently spread them and expose more people to misinformation. Encourage people to contact you directly first when they hear rumours or unvalidated news ("fake news") rather than sharing it more widely with other members of your faith community so that you can confirm, look into, or shut down a rumour or myth. Remind them of examples of how leaders in the faith avoided stigma in the past, and how they treated those who were less fortunate.
3. Plan ahead - For example: Prepare a Continuity Plan for your faith community with some things that should be done immediately (like hand and respiratory hygiene), additional steps that can be taken later (e.g., cancelling public and private gatherings over a certain size), and even stricter recommendations (e.g., worshiping privately in each member's home versus having group worship) when the disease is spreading easily.
4. Connect with and care for your community - For example: Consider meeting out of doors (standing a metre or two apart), using telephone calls and/or smartphones for video chats, serenading people with hymns from outside of their homes, or engaging in other creative ways to encourage people and keep in touch with people without incurring risks.
5. Provide psychosocial support to families and the wider community - For example: Ensure safe care of the vulnerable and elderly, support and care for caregivers in the community, radiate a sense of calm, and listen with compassion.
6. Provide spiritual nurture in the event of physical distancing - For example, ask: Can you use newsletters, email, text messages, community radio, or digital outreach methods to reach people? If your government advises against community gatherings, can you enable people to access resources digitally in the event hey are unable to get to church/mosque? What other ways can you help them to do this? For example, you may be able to: live-stream services; do services over community radio; and/or record prayers and sermons at home via video/voice recording and share via SMS (text messaging) or WhatsApp.

The document concludes with lists of additional resources and guidance - e.g., the Channels of Hope COVID-19 module, which is being field tested by WV offices in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Angola. It is intended to support any existing faith and development (F&D) training curriculum in the field.