AHA! (Awareness with Human Action) is a European Union funded consortium project, with WFDD and seven other international and national partner organizations, led by the Network of Religious and Traditional Peacemakers. The project focuses on COVID-19 and peace-building in South Asia. The aim is to adopt an integrated, holistic, and multi-stakeholder approach to address the pandemic, disinformation, and hate speech, primarily through strategic involvement of community influencers. The project’s overall objective is to contribute to the response efforts of the COVID-19 pandemic by preventing conflict and building social cohesion in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and broader South Asia.

WFDD leads the continuing learning and development efforts by producing country case reviews, key person interviews, country and regional level policy briefs and situation reports, and training personnel. WFDD assisted in the selection of 45 community leaders and influencers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka and 5 community leaders and influencers from the region who have received financial and logistic support. The fellows engaged at the community level through processes like confidence-building, dialogue, capacity-building and initiatives aiming to increase awareness on COVID-19 including factual information and countering the spread of misinformation.