Let's see, was there anything special about 2020?
What a year! In addition to the very extraordinary Covid situation, our team added 3 new members in 2020, started on our very first piece of remote research, and began working with a number of new partners. Overall, we are very grateful that we have been able to continue working and that our team has remained largely healthy :-).
We started working from home in the middle of March and our projects were put on hold soon afterward. Two of these were eventually cancelled, although we were lucky that for one of these we had already done enough of the fieldwork that we were still able to write up some findings for the client. After a few weeks of feeling a bit stuck and unsure, we were able to get moving again with some internal training and then by starting to compile Covid-relevant insights from our previous studies in Indonesia and Uganda.
As we looked to expand on these initial insights in Indonesia by reaching out to previous study families, we discussed possibilities that eventually resulted in a series of learning discussions with the Pulse Lab Jakarta team. We then received support from a client to turn our outreach with families about the impacts of Covid into a full study that would be conducted remotely over a period of over six months (this will be finishing up next month).
It was around this time that we also began developing Covid-19 field safety protocols and standards as we prepared for the possibility of being able to do some fieldwork again. As some of our projects that had gone on hold began to re-start their activities in July, we had our first trial at conducting fieldwork during the pandemic as part of a study in East Lombok. Since that experience, we have continued to conduct some fieldwork while also working on other remote research.
Along with the collaborations with our clients and teams like Pulse Lab, 2020 also brought possibilities with new partners like Quicksand. We appreciate the continued optimism and support from partners like these along with the spirit and energy of everyone in our team including our research associates.
We hope that you and those close to you stay healthy, and we look forward to a 2021 that will hopefully bring back a greater sense of normalcy before too long.