The Tadamon CSO (Civil Society Organizations) Pandemic Response Accelerator Program was approved by the Bank in 2020 to contribute to maintaining gains in SDG achievements. The Program operationalizes the Competence, Linkage, Delivery and Funding tracks of the P5P and 10-Year Strategy, which stress the need for IsDB to become a bank for a network of developers.

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) play critical role in engaging citizens as a foundation for sustainable innovation to contain and mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Launched by IsDB and the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISFD), the purpose of the Program is to contribute to the immediate and medium-term efforts of MCs to prevent, contain and respond to negative impacts of COVID-19, particularly in the 17 MCs affected by fragility and conflict, refugees and internally displaced people. The Program adopts the SPRP 3-R approach, focusing on Response, Restore and Restart, with technology playing a key role at each stage. The Program focuses on several SDGs including 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 16 and 17 and is derived from the approved Strategic Preparedness and Response Program (SPRP), which aims at supporting Member Countries’ (MCs) efforts in preventing, containing, mitigating, and recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The scope of the program includes: (i) Emergency Medical Response through CSOs (Respond). It entails medical supply to health facilities, essential community social services such as psycho-social counselling, trainings of community health workers and communication, awareness; (ii) Education in Emergency (Respond). The program will ensure the provision of basic education in emergency situation and skills development through high tech and/or simple communication tools; (iii) Build Community Resilience (Restore): deprived households including women-headed households will acquire, among others, entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and competencies required to engage in income generating activities through online and in person while maintaining physical distancing; and (iv) Setting up a Pandemic Response Accelerator Window: The program introduces an innovative tool “Pandemic Accelerator” to mobilize resources to (i) contribute to the response to the  pandemic by tapping into a network of CSOs, social innovators; (ii) improve access to finance, building capacity for entrepreneurship; and (iii) mapping and empowering organizations. The Accelerator will be hosted in www.tadamon.community of the “IsDB – ISFD NGO Empowerment for Poverty Reduction Program”.  The pandemic response accelerator will also provide (i) digital neighborhoods that improves the social infrastructure and community resilience through digital education, digital care, telemedicine; (ii) physical distancing to engage and provide psychosocial support, building new ways of virtual social networks, and solidarity. The Accelerator will use solutions with blockchain and similar technologies.

The scope of the Program includes:

• Emergency Medical Response through CSOs (Respond). It entails medical supply to health facilities, essential community social services such as psycho-social counselling, training of community health workers and communication, awareness.
• Education in Emergency (Respond). The Program will ensure the provision of basic education in emergency situations and skills development through high tech and/or simple communication tools.
• Building Community Resilience (Restore). Deprived households, including those headed by women, will acquire, among others, entrepreneurial skills and knowledge and competencies required to engage in income-generating activities, both online and in person while maintaining physical distancing.
• Setting up a Pandemic Response Accelerator Window.

The Program introduces an innovative “Pandemic Accelerator” tool to mobilise resources to:

• Contribute to the response to the pandemic by tapping into a network of CSOs and social innovators.
• Improve access to finance, building capacity for entrepreneurship.
• Map and empower organisations.

The Accelerator will be hosted at www.tadamon.community on the “IsDB – ISFD NGO Empowerment for Poverty Reduction Program”. It will also provide:

• Digital neighbourhoods that improve social infrastructure and community resilience through:
• Digital education, digital care and telemedicine.
• Physical distancing to engage and provide psychosocial support, offering new ways of building
• Virtual social networks, and solidarity.

The Accelerator will use solutions with blockchain and similar technologies, and will make an Open Call in 2021 through the Tadamon Platform for Covid-19 and pandemic response resources mobilization using donations and co-financing.

To fulfil the needs of vulnerable communities and to serve the MCs during crises or in their long-term development perspectives, the accelerator and the Tadamon platform offer a new way of bringing additional value to digital transformation, with new mechanisms to foster networks and mobilize financing and resources. This is in line with the emerging trends that capitalize on networks of developers including partnerships with non-traditional actors, encouraging digital transformation and innovation with crowdfunding and blockchain technologies.

Plan & Achivements

The most vulnerable groups are those that are at higher risks from the Covid-19 pandemic. Their lives, livelihoods and conditions are significantly affected by the cascading effects on social and economic conditions. Decisions of governments and partners to reduce the costs of the pandemic for some societies have directly affected the hard-to-reach communities who have no access to basic health and social services. At the frontline of the crisis, CSOs with the support of IsDB are contributing to the efforts and participating in the global responses.

After needs assessments and closed consultations with partners, especially CSOs, the chief results expected from the Program include:

• Around US$ 46 million mobilized from non-traditional partners. The total cost of the Tadamon CSO Pandemic Response Accelerator Program is US$ 55.00 million. The seed contribution of IsDB–ISFD to the financing of the Program through a grant totals US$ 8.5 million.
• 1 million vulnerable people will gain access to basic medical services to help mitigate the health impact of Covid-19.
• Capacity building for 5,000 community health workers to respond to Covid-19.
• Use of media coverage for awareness raising and sensitization campaigns to reach 3 to 5 million vulnerable people in affected communities.
• 20,000 children, refugees and those at risk of being left behind will have access to continuing basic education and skills development.
• 3,000 of the most deprived households will access financing to set up their own income generating activities. Also, 60% of the targeted households will have coping, adaptive and transformative resilience capacity to risks and shocks.

To date (from 2020Q3 to 2021Q2), the accelerator Program has raised over US$ 23.4 million of actual commitments or pledges under finalization from partners, particularly INGOs such as Spark International, IFRC, Light for the World and Plan International. The beneficiaries are the 10 MCs facing fragility and affected by conflict, with a target population of 13 million beneficiaries living in vulnerable communities, 4,300 people trained, 90 established startups, 4,400 vulnerable households supported. These countries include Burkina Faso, Comoros, Djibouti, Guinea, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Mali, Ni-ger, Sudan, which currently benefit from a number of projects to support their vulnerable communities.

Partner CSOs are currently adopting community engagement approaches that ensure prevention, identification of early symptoms, mitigation of transmission, and support of humanitarian and social services for the most vulnerable populations and local authorities working together with community leaders.