The one-stop-shop to fight the COVID-19
At a time when international actors are seeking to support an urban response to the different challenges of the health emergency, the exchange of knowledge is necessary to disseminate experiences and learn from each other. The Urban Sustainability Exchange (USE) platform has developed the COVID-19 Service Point, a repository of initiatives led by partner organizations to address COVID-19 at the local and regional scales.
Led by Metropolis and co-funded by the City of Berlin, the USE platform represents a key tool for citymakers and practitioners to share ideas and experiences on sustainable urban development. And in a period of crisis like the one we are going through these days, its role becomes even more effective in connecting distant people and facilitating research and knowledge exchange.
The USE's COVID-19 Service Point today gathers together a series of initiatives carried out by 9 partners: Metropolis, UCLG, Eurocities, apolitical, the Covenant of Mayors - Europe, URBACT, the Guangzhou Award for Urban Innovation, C40, and the World Urban Campaign. On the website, users can find a brief introduction to the projects together with the link to the specific platforms and resources developed by those organizations. Each one of the initiatives presented gives local governments specific tools to address different urban challenges raised by the coronavirus. It is therefore important, in order to have a more comprehensive idea, to navigate through those channels and resources that the COVID-19 Service Point makes available. In this sense, the role of this platform becomes crucial for collecting in one single spot the different contributions of the above mentioned organizations.
In particular, on this website can be found two initiatives promoted by Metropolis: the Cities for Global Health and the Live Learning Experience (the latter launched in collaboration with UCLG and UN-HABITAT).
In addition to the COVID-19 Service Point, the USE has created a video to raise children's awarness about the virus. Entitled "COVID-19 explained to children", it is available in 4 different languages (English, French, Spanish, and German) and can be accessed here.
For more information, visit the COVID-19 Service Point and the use platform.