Indigenous youth are at the core of the More than Words & Networks for Change projects. Mentoring/Auntieship is a key theme throughout the project work and we are looking to develop resources for project participants, team members, partners and stakeholders.

The International Cellphilm Festival is a regular event of the PCL/IHDW dating back to 2013. Given the particular circumstances we are all experiencing with Covid-19, and the physical distancing measures, we decided to launch a special edition this summer. All of a sudden, people had to stay at home, work and study remotely, and adapt to a new way of living. The purpose of this special edition is to invite people to share with us how they are experiencing this period. The festival is open to everyone.

An emerging feature of many of the projects attached to the PCL and the IHDW is that WhatsApp is one of main communication tools used by so many of our participants [youth, teacher educators etc .. in Sierra Leone, Mozambique South Africa, Indigenous youth, refugee populations in Montreal How could we make better use of WhatsApp or other platforms in the context of Covid-19 [in these various contexts] and after?

An ongoing project of the Games and Gamificiation and Well-being Working Group of the IHDW is to expand the community and to support the development of this work as an area for participatory research and social change. The focus for the internship is to assist in compiling information about the area but also contributing to expanding research possibilities, particularly in development contexts.

This summer, 7 students will be joining the PCL and will be contributing to develop some projects. Their work will involve collaboration with their peers and PCL members and partners. It will be necessary to give visibility to the work done by the interns during the summer with news and updates about the projects and activities in which they are involved. This could involve keeping the internship section up to date in both PCL and IHDW websites and other communication channels.

A key feature of the work within ‘Networks for Change and Well-being: Girl-led ‘from the ground up’ policy making to address sexual violence in Canada and South Africa’ [now in its 6th year] relates to drawing together a number of knowledge mobilization components. Some of these initiatives are meant to support sustaining connections between the girls across the sites in the two countries, and others are really about continuing to ‘get the word out’ about research attached to the project.

This project is just in its beginning stages and because of Covid-19 we are not exactly certain when it will start. We had planned to ‘get going’ in July but the earliest now is likely to be in November, 2020. This 3-year research project funded through Dubai Cares (DC) E-cubed initiative will complement a large Global Affairs Canada-funded education in emergencies program IMAGINE, being implemented by Plan in Mopti and Ségou. The research design entails both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative approach will use innovative and child-friendly arts-based methods, while a quantitative survey will build on adolescents’ insight into agency and education on a larger scale. With a focus on equality, inclusiveness, capacity development, and sustainability, this research project will engage adolescent participants as active research partners. The project will generate valuable findings, in the Francophone context, to inform policy and practice related to education and gender equality in conflict-affected settings in Mali and beyond. Findings, considered a public good, will be shared freely and widely at international, regional, and national levels through the numerous networks, partnerships, and communication platforms of Plan and McGill.

The More than Words project has a focus to develop and adapt ‘studying impact’ and evaluation tools (qualitative and quantitative) both to establish a baseline on the impact of arts-based approaches, and to study the impact of art-making and mentorship on youth, family and community.

We are developing guiding principles for the project with which we can evaluate the impact of the project work. Through consultation with our fieldsites, we need to develop real-world tools that can be accessed by community members and organisations involved in this work and the evaluation of it.

Like Zika and Ebola, one of the anticipated consequences of Covid-19 is the negative impact that physical distancing and social isolation will have on already vulnerable girls and women experiencing sexual and gender-based violence [SGBV]. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recognized this by announcing 40 million dollars in funding for women’s shelters and sexual assault centres across Canada, but this concern Is not unique to Canada. Girls and women from around the globe are facing increasingly precarious personal safety as a direct result of the health measures being taken to curb the global transmission of COVID-19. One of the critical barriers to addressing SGBV in a time of physical distancing, lockdowns, and social isolation is that vulnerable girls and young women are unable to access support services that might otherwise be in place (e.g. girls’ clubs, gender clubs, hotlines, programming). An increased lack of privacy within the home further accentuates cultural forms of patriarchy significant to SGBV. Local and international NGOS, government ministries and researchers are developing emergency SGBV responses during the time of distancing, but we must tread carefully and thoughtfully in our response to this new normal. Working to combat SGBV, could potentially ‘do more harm than good’ in our efforts to learn about the experiences of girls and young women in lockdown. The high rates of intimate partner violence and child abuse’ behind closed doors’ means that face to face as well as remote technology-driven and text-based programming are proving to be problematic.