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Supporting livestock livelihoods during the Coronavirus crisis

By 13th April 2020News

With meetings and training courses now on hold because of the current Coronavirus crisis, we’re all having to find ways to work differently. At the same time, livestock keepers around the world will continue to be vulnerable to disasters, both natural and man-made, as well as dealing with the effects of COVID-19.

If you are in lock down and unable to go out, this may be an opportunity to review some of the LEGS resources that may be useful in the future, when operational work can begin again and livestock keeping communities may be trying to recover from the effects of this and other crises.

Here is a reminder of some of the LEGS resources which may be useful at this time as a refresher for you or to help you to provide support or training to others:

  • The online Gender Training Module is a self-guided short online training to increase understanding of gender analysis in livestock-based emergency response. Click here to find out more.
  • The LEGS videos page contains a number of short videos: ‘The LEGS Story’ is a useful brief introduction to LEGS for managers and decision-makers; ‘Ten Things You Should Know About LEGS’ is a practical and lively summary of the key aspects of LEGS for practitioners and others; and ‘How to Gather Better Evidence of Impact’ is a short (11 minute) training video on impact assessment of livestock emergency response.
  • The key findings from the recently completed LEGS Operational Research on supporting veterinary quality in emergency response are available here, both the full Research Report and two shorter Briefing Papers, one on emergency veterinary voucher schemes; and one on the LEGS Core Standards and Community-Based Animal Health Services.
  • Two years ago we produced the LEGS Drought Tool a LEGS-based preparedness, planning and response tool for improved resilience in the drylands of the Horn of Africa. There are also two Briefing Papers on drought in pastoral areas: Economic Impacts of Early Drought Response and Livestock and Livelihoods in Pastoral Drought

For specific guidance on responding to COVID-19 please see the Sphere and Humanitarian Standards Partnership guide to applying humanitarian standards to fight COVID-19