DG’s organizational response to COVID-19

Digital Green is helping slow the spread of COVID-19 by supporting staff, partners and community.

We remain committed to supporting farmers, who are in even greater need given the health, food, social and economic challenges of lockdowns and market disruptions. We are working with our partners to understand their needs, and how we can help them too — both by supporting their organizations but also with respect to helping them still engage communities and gather insights they need to inform messages that go out, and their programs and policies more generally to ensure health and food security. To do all this, we have begun putting together internal task forces for staff to explore ways to use technology to support farmers in coping with the near-term and project impacts of this crisis and to strengthen resilience in the future.

While we are finding ways to adapt our programs to be responsive to farmers’ needs, our immediate concern was the wellbeing of our staff.

To slow the spread of the virus and ensure the safety of our staff, partners and communities we serve, we have instituted policies requiring staff worldwide to work from home and restricting travel until further notice.

We have also updated our leave policy. Any staff member who becomes sick with COVID-19 or who must take care of a family member who has been affected will be offered paid sick leave specifically for this circumstance. This COVID-19 sick leave will not be limited and is separate from our normal sick leave to ensure staff are able to get the care they need without additional economic concerns.

We realize that not all staff will be able to continue working from home in a full-time capacity. In order to remain in a position to resume work as soon as it is possible and safe to do so, we have rolled out an administrative leave policy for staff whose roles cannot be carried out remotely. All staff placed on administrative leave will continue to be paid at the same level and receive benefits. Our goals are to support our staff without contributing further to the economic crisis that is resulting from COVID-19 closures and to retain skilled staff members in a position to jump back into our work supporting farmers when the immediate crisis subsides.

We hope you are all staying safe and well during these extremely trying times. We welcome your ideas and suggestions at covid19@digitalgreen.org

For more information, resources and updates see this post.