 A Rohingya volunteer surveys WASH facilities for repair in Kutupalong Refugee Camp, Bangladesh. (CPI) Since late July, heavy rains in Kutupalong Refugee Camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, have caused widespread flooding and landslides, damaging shelters and facilities, and displacing and affecting thousands of people. Rohingya volunteers supported by Community Partners International have been at the forefront of efforts to help those affected.
 On March 22, to mark World Water Day, and under the theme "Valuing Water", Rohingya water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) volunteers supported by Community Partners International (CPI) led activities in Kutupalong Refugee Camp, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, to raise community awareness of water security and safety.
 Ayesha with her newborn baby girl in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. (CPI) Ayesha and Jannat are Rohingya refugees from Myanmar sheltering in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. They fled violence in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State in 2017 with their families, walking for many days to reach the Bangladesh border. Today, they live in Kutupalong, the world’s largest refugee camp. Both receive assistance from networks of Rohingya community health and water, sanitation and hygiene volunteers supported by Community Partners International (CPI). Here are their stories.
 A temporary COVID-19 screening clinic set up by the Ta'ang Health Committee in Shan State, Myanmar. (CPI/THC) On November 4, 2020, Community Partners International (CPI) held the second in a series of live webinars focused on “COVID-19 and Conflict in Myanmar’s Ethnic States”. At this second webinar, speakers from ethnic and community-based organizations in Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin States discussed their needs for additional assistance and support to ensure the effectiveness of their COVID-19 responses.
Community Partners International's intrepid Fecal Sludge Management team, aka the Sludgebusters, play a vital if unglamorous role keeping latrines safe and hygienic in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
 It's Humanity Foundation (IHF) staff lead hand hygiene activities with children in Dhaka, Bangladesh. (IHF/CPI) On Global Handwashing Day (October 15), a mobile school bus supported by Community Partners International (CPI) visited children living in slum communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to educate them about hand hygiene and distribute hygiene kits.
Rohingya refugee children in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, with some of the cards they received from children in Houston, Texas. Photo: Community Partners International
"We hope that Rohingya children feel happy seeing our cards and that they think, ‘I received this. There are others out there who care for me.’"
These are the words of Faryal Asim, 14. To mark World Refugee Day, Faryal and a group of friends from Houston, Texas, designed cards expressing their solidarity and support for Rohingya children from Myanmar living as refugees in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Faryal and her friends are members of families who have supported Community Partners International (CPI)'s Rohingya Refugee Response since the beginning of the refugee crisis in August 2017. "After hearing what they were going through we decided to make cards for them to make sure they know to stay brave and courageous and to not give up," Faryal explains.
An ethnic health worker uses a megaphone to broadcast COVID-19 health information in a remote community in Kayin (Karen) State, Myanmar. Photo: Karen Department of Health and Welfare
Community Partners International (CPI)’s Myanmar team has been busy supporting conflict-affected, hard-to-reach and under-served communities across Myanmar to establish and maintain COVID-19 prevention and response activities. Here are some of the ways that CPI has been mobilizing to help our ethnic and community-based health organization partners in the past few weeks.
 A still from the "Stay at Home" animated music video. In a new song and animated video supported by Community Partners International (CPI), and released on April 9, Myanmar music stars Wine Su Khine Thein and Ni Ni Khin Zaw urge people in Myanmar to stay home to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The video can be viewed on Facebook here.
On March 24, Myanmar announced its first two confirmed cases of COVID-19. The day before, with the supply of hand sanitizer diminishing rapidly and the retail price rising fourfold in a short period of time, Community Partners International (CPI)'s Myanmar team started to produce it in their office in Yangon. It was already clear that the network of community-based clinics and health workers serving hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in displacement camps, remote communities and urban slums across Myanmar would struggle to source sufficient quantities of hand sanitizer to meet their needs. By sourcing the raw materials early, and producing it themselves, CPI's Myanmar team planned to help bridge the gap and reduce the spread of COVID-19.
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