COVID-19

Thirty-two-year-old Bai was supposed to fly abroad for work when the Philippine Government declared a country-wide lockdown including the temporary suspension of thousands of international and domestic flights. Bai had prepared for her departure for a long time, but all of her plans took a sudden...

Ben, 36, is a community organizer with an NGO helping people find jobs and creating sources of income in his hometown, Cotabato City. When the pandemic began, his role shifted to mobilizing Barangays (townships) to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus through hygiene awareness sessions that...

The Kamuning Public Market was closed last March when an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was declared to slow the spread of COVID-19. Only food vendors were allowed to sell. Seamstresses like 61-year-old Lina Arroyo had to stay at home--a mandate she found hard to follow.

Thoughts of loneliness and anxiety ran through Lynda’s mind as she volunteered herself to enter into self-isolation. What transpired not only disrupted her work, but meant not being able to attend to the child she was breastfeeding.

The COVID-19 Roadblock: Community quarantines isolated communities but cut farmers off from markets and consumers

Haifa is one of the many overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) forced to go back home when the pandemic began. She had been working as a domestic helper in Oman for the past three years. Her contract had expired and the lower demand for OFW domestic helpers made her decide to go back to the Philippines...

Market vendors needed to sell to their customers confined at home. Motorized rickshaw drivers needed a new route to earn money. An app and a community initiative brought them all together.

For Sabel, it was like a scene from a movie. It was around 11:00 in the evening when a police car rushed through their quiet street, waking up the neighbourhood. Suddenly, the police came down from the vehicle and rushed to their house to collect her sisters. “We felt like criminals,” she shared,...

In the Philippines, Oxfam, together with our local partners, are providing immediate aid and support to the most affected communities in areas affected by Covid-19 in Eastern Samar, armed conflict in Mindanao, and the succession of destructive typhoons in October and November 2020 that battered...