Since early 2020, the world has been at war with an invisible and deadly enemy: COVID-19. It attacks all, relentlessly. The COVID-19 outbreak affected all segments of the population and is particularly detrimental to members of those social groups in the most vulnerable situations, including older persons, persons with disabilities, youth and children.

Egypt was not far from the virus spread and has been facing a lot of challenges due to this global pandemic, but the NGOs, even with very limited resources, have succeeded to play a great role in strengthening the resilience of local communities and raise their awareness concerning health, hygiene and necessary precautionary measures and also on the safe disposal of hazardous wastes resulted from using masks and gloves, to avoid more spread of the virus.

In February 2021, Egypt Nile Discourse Forum (EgyNDF) called for a meeting to discuss all the challenges that members are facing due to COVID-19, share their experiences and best practices on the actions taken to serve their communities in those difficult times, and their coordination with relevant local authorities in this context.

The most significant challenges were the very limited available resources and not being able to reach out to their communities due to the measures of limiting physical meetings. However, they presented their efforts to reach out to community members using social media avenues.

Additionally, Mr. Mohamed Hussen, Project Manager – AOYE, has presented the media campaign led by AOYE on the safe disposal of hazardous wastes to minimize the numbers of affected people. The campaign was widely disseminated through social media pages and websites, nationally and regionally, and shared with the LDFs to maximize the benefits.

Finally, participants agreed on the importance of joining efforts and share all available knowledge and experience through the Egy-NDF to overcome challenges and discuss solutions and available opportunities.