We all have some stories to share about 2020. We’ve lost, found, grieved, touched, worried, inspired, cried, laughed. All have been, in every sense of the word, peculiar. If we look up “peculiar” in the dictionary, it leads us to three other terms that may describe 2020 altogether: unexpected, baffling, and extraordinary. This pandemic involved a virus that was unexpected in the way it transmits and affects. The way the government responded to the pandemic was (and still is) baffling. Despite it all, we’ve been showing our extraordinary sides. Everything since the pandemic hit was new for most of us. Yet, we are moving forward. Reflecting on all that, I am writing this as an invitation not to let what we have learned in 2020 be wasted on us.
Science is still our best bet, but only when we listen to it.
Sometime in September 2019, I listened to Sam Harris’ Making Sense podcast. The episode was “The Plague Years,” where he interviewed the author of “Superbugs: The Race to Stop an Epidemic.” They talked about everything we’re in now. A couple of years before that, I attended classes where case studies were centred around the ongoing Ebola outbreak. I was lucky that this pandemic didn’t come to me as a shock, but I was even more fortunate that no one in our team was a denier. Everyone was and still is an understanding-seeker. That instinct to listen to science and observe the evidence has enabled us to quickly adjust our ways of working since March 16th and prepare everyone for the long haul. Shortly after the office was closed, we knew this would be a marathon, not a sprint.
Team, thank you for your uninterrupted commitment to examine the facts and interrogate our interpretations. Thank you for your patience as knowledge evolves slowly, and comprehension is usually built on a series of inconclusive results.
When the situation baffles us, adapting is our source of hope.
Knowing that this pandemic was not going to go away quickly (as the government said at that time), the next thing we did was to set up a system to make sure everyone in our team was safe and able to mitigate its consequences. Our management was aware that every direction we made took an option away from us. We shifted to full coordinated-remote working for our best interest, people around us, and the pandemic response itself. We have been practicing partial remote working for years since we measure our performance based on the quality of outputs and the adherence to deadlines, not our physical attendance. Yet we knew that going to the office has provided structure, purpose, or occasional escape for some people. The management’s responsibility was to support the team to stay well, agile, and virtually connected. But the success of this transition lied on our good judgment to do the practical albeit hard things now because we care and think intelligently about the future.
Team, thank you for your adaptability.
Organizing is a survival skill.
This year we learned that we should never take organizing skills for granted not only in work but in managing our lives. First, we make plans. We identify the problems, set our goals, and break down the potential constraints to tackle. Second, we allocate our resources, be it time, money, network, support from others. Third, we apply the discipline of doing and evaluating.
Team, thank you for always striving for excellence through collaboration. To own our mistakes and shortcomings but to not let ourselves dwell in guilt and disappointment. To know when to act, schedule, delegate, and let go. To adjust our targets without being complacent. To explore matters intellectually when we are first drawn to the subject emotionally, and the other way around. To be resourceful in recognizing our feelings. To be kind to others and ourselves.
Supported by our partners, this year we completed seven studies, finalized over a dozen reports, and reached over 2,000 people through our activities. We had three journal publications out and a couple of manuscripts submitted. We maintained our support for the implementation of some national strategies and the development of new ones. We assessed how to sustain meaningful and ethical research and advocacy about children and vulnerable groups in times where direct contacts may expose the people we want to help to a health threat. We will continue to explore this. Also, we contributed to the pandemic response. Through collaborative work, we developed guidelines for identifying invisible populations to be registered for safety nets. We assisted 12 districts in four provinces and their village officers to facilitate vulnerable individuals accessing social assistance during the pandemic. We trained health and community volunteers, and we developed a set of policy recommendations on responding and preventing COVID-19 impacts on children and vulnerable individuals. Through all these accomplishments, we organized our thoughts and energies. Individually and as a team. All while we attend to our homes, people under our care, and ourselves.
Everything is changing, and it is the most vulnerable who bear the dire consequences.
The pandemic cannot define our whole year, but it feels like it has, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to conclude soon. The next chapter after it was resolved is uncertain. But we know for sure that this pandemic has unmasked the ignored problems of inequality and injustice. We know that shocks, such as this one we’re under, will continue to disproportionately implicate the most vulnerable. We were frustrated but also reassured of our path. Everything we’ve learned this year and before will continue to fuel our thinking and action to address the challenges of, respond to children and vulnerable individuals affected by, and prevent the suffering resulting from poverty, violence and discrimination, and risks of emergencies.
I thought about what I would wish for 2021. I couldn’t help but think whether I was off point in what I wished for 2020. At the end of 2019, I wrote:
“Approaching 2020, I’d like to reiterate the wish that I made on PUSKAPA’s anniversary last August. I wish us the ability to move at a speed that allows us to think, to understand the problem, and to catch those who are too small, they fall through the cracks. I wish us the capacity to extend our physical, emotional, and intellectual presence in creating and maintaining safe spaces for difficult issues to be resolved: issues of exclusion, harm, invisibility, and injustice.”
I’d say we carried all that through 2020.
To celebrate the new year is situational, but to be hopeful is intentional. Let us step into 2021 with clarity in our heads, kindness in our hearts, and determination to be useful.
I wish everyone the ease in figuring out the world while temporarily stripped off of social cues and contentment in continuing the good work within the limits of interactions.
Happy new year!
Santi Kusumaningrum
Director of PUSKAPA
