Policymakers and public health experts unanimously recognise the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable persons: even in countries with well-developed responses, the outbreak and its repercussions imperil the basic well-being of social groups whose livelihoods are already precarious, while the uneven distribution of suffering threatens to aggravate inequality and division. One complicating factor here is the intersectional nature of health and socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Another is the complexity of risk in contemporary socioecological systems. The COVINFORM project will draw upon intersectionality theory and complex systems analysis in an interdisciplinary critique of COVID-19 responses on the levels of government, public health, community, and information and communications. The project will conduct research on three levels: 1) on an EU27 MS plus UK level, quantitative secondary data will be analysed and models will be developed; 2) Within 15 target countries, documentary sources on the national level and in at least one local community per country will be analysed; 3) in 10 target communities, primary empirical research will be conducted, utilising both classical and innovative quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g. visual ethnography, participatory ethnography, and automated analysis of short video testimonials). Promising practices will be evaluated in target communities through case studies spanning diverse disciplines (social epidemiology, the economics of unpaid labour, the sociology of migration, etc.) and vulnerable populations (COVID-19 patients, precarious families, migrating health care workers, etc.). The project will culminate in the development of an online portal and visual toolkit for stakeholders in government, public health, and civil society integrating data streams, indices and indicators, maps, models, primary research and case study findings, empirically grounded policy guidance, and creative assessment tools.

The project “Social Innovation with New and Active Citizens” has for 24 months, worked towards strengthening and empowering young minorities, migrants, refugees and local youth in becoming active citizens with respect for democratic values, fundamental rights and intercultural understanding. The project has been implemented by Red Cross societies in Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary and Romania.The background for this project was that all partners had witnessed an influx of refugees and migrants to their countries, while at the same time negative attitudes towards migrants and minorities were widespread in all countries and on the rise with populism spreading all over Europe. As a result, e.g. Roma communities are subject to considerable social and economic vulnerability partly due to discimination and exclusion. A needs assessment showed that the challenges for the target groups are common across the countries. Although Romania has received fewer migrants than the other countries and Denmark has a small Roma population, the stereotypes of minorities and migrants persist in all partner countries. Against this backdrop, the immediate objective of the project was that: Young minorities, migrants and local youth in Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary and Romania have increased opportunity and strengthened capacity to support socially inclusive communities through participation in innovative volunteer driven activities. The main target groups have been minority populations such as Roma communities, migrants, refugees, young volunteers in the partner organizations, other civil society organizations as well as public authorities (ministries, municipalities). The general public has also been a target group for awareness raising and the project partners have worked closely with media to disseminate the information and activities that the project produced. The projected succeeded in engaging voulnteers to develop innovative volunteer driven activities, whereby the young volunteers empowered themselves through improved life skills, self-confidence and a sense of inclusion. The project activities were focused around two thematic pillars: Life skills and peer-to-peer dialogue.The project partners all succeeded in translating and adapting the Life skills manual developed by the Danish Red Cross Youth, to reflect each countries’ needs in close cooperation with youth volunteers, minorities and migrants. Bulgarian Red cross held a transnational training of trainers, during which experts from the Danish Red Cross Youth trained youth volunteers from Bulgaria, Denmark and Romania to become Life Skills Trainers. The main objective has been to establish a strong theoretical background for Life Skills and integrate this into the regional RC branches and existing training/workshop practices, which overall has been a success. The Life skills program has become completely youth-led and owned; the volunteers chose the groups they would like to work with, and, with the assistance of the project coordinators, changed and added to the existing materials according to the feedback of the participants. The participants in the Life skills activities are not seen as a “target group”, but as equal partners in the development and implementation of activities, and they are encouraged to improve the program based both on the local context and their own experiences as representatives of different minority and/or vulnerable groups. This has also led to widening the anticipated number of participants. There have been participants with disabilities, as well as young people from different other minorities besides Roma and migrants, such as participants with different ethnical background, sexual orientation and foster children, etc. Hence the project has resulted in increased opportunities for more groups. The peer-to-peer based community dialogue activities involved local youth, minorities, and migrants to come up with, develop and facilitate peer-to-peer dialogue on topics on discrimination, social inclusion and critical thinking. Hungarian Red Cross hosted a transnational training of trainers in peer-to-peer dialogue and the partners all developed innovative peer-to-peer activities, the common denominator being, to discuss, adjust and continuously refine the activities with the inclusion of minorities, migrants and local youth. The peer-to-peer activities have had impact at local, national and European level: At European level the project has established a transnational network of young motivated volunteers who are sharing knowledge, experiences, best practices and innovative methods in conducting social youth work. At the national level young volunteers have increased their capacities and gained knowledge on initiating dialogue and cooperating effectively with local authorities, media and other civil society organizations. Furthermore, the partners and other stakeholders have gained increased awareness about the situation of minorities and migrants.

PREPSHIELD aims to foster a more holistic and citizen-centric approach to health crisis preparedness and management, by co-creating policy recommendations, methods and an AI-powered platform for crisis management to better prepare for and address health emergencies from a social and societal perspective. To reach this objective, PREPSHIELD will rely on the participation of public authorities, citizens (specifically from vulnerable and non-compliant groups), CSOs, DROs and healthcare institutions. Based on the needs of these groups, PREPSHIELD will develop recommendations for health crisis preparedness, management and communication as well as tools to simulate future crises through an iterative process, involving various pilots for their evaluation. These pilots will include a communication pilot, tabletop exercises and an online exercise, which will include all these stakeholders and take place at different scales in different countries: local (Hamburg, DE), regional (Piedmont, IT) and national (Romania). The online exercise will rely on a PREPSHIELD platform and app (built on the proven CRIMSON platform) to reproduce real-life crisis communication conditions and provide decision-makers with simulations and feedback on the behaviour, wellbeing, capacities, and resources of the other stakeholders. The project brings together a complementary consortium of five universities, two public authorities, one RTO, two non-profit organizations, one SME and two large enterprises from seven European Union countries (and Switzerland).