The German federal asylum seekers law mandates that all asylum seekers must be housed and provided for while their asylum application is being processed. The Berlin State Office for Refugee Affairs is in charge of providing and monitoring the quality of housing and public health in refugee shelters. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic it has become urgent to make sure every resident understands and adheres to the safety regulations, especially with regard to quarantine laws.

Objective

The goal was to provide residents of refugee shelters official information around scoial distancing, good hygiene practices  and quarantine laws to prevent a COVID 19- infection outbreak.

In Germany, the State usually provides text-based information in the German language only. For face-to-face communication with refugees, translators are used. However, this is not possible during lock-down periods. Utilizing the service of the council’s inhouse translators, podcasts about COVID-19 safety measures were produced in 14 languages and uploaded to the council website.  Social media channels and the network of shelter operators were used to spread the word to the residents of refugee shelters. Berlin became the first German city to make COVID-19 information available to non-German-speaking groups.

Members of the refugee community living in the shelters shared them online with their networks and communities. Refugees, migrants and other non-German speaking groups outside the shelters were reached by cooperating with district officials, volunteers, NGOs and community organisations to spread the information via as many channels as possible. This way, the wider immigrant communities were able to benefit from the strategy as well.

The written information (posters and flyers) was translated by an external agency amounting to a total of less than $1000USD. The background information on COVID-19 regulations etc. was compiled by the press office of the State Office for Refugee Affairs. These measures were both cost-effective and non-bureaucratic which was crucial when the pandemic was just starting and the information had to reach a lot of people in a very short time.

Firstly, the initiative succeeded in reducing fear and insecurity by providing reliable information on COVID-19 measures to a highly heterogenous group of people living in a precarious situation. It effectively stopped fake news and rumours about the virus from spreading. It helped stabilise the social situation in the shelters and led to a high level of cooperation, especially with regard to quarantine regulations. The spread of the virus in shelters was controlled and lives were saved.

The City administration monitored the infection rate in shelters very closely. Through the communication strategy combined with positive-tested residents being moved to separate quarantine accommodation, the infection rate was limited to no more than 60 active cases at any given time during March - September 2020. Only two out of 20,000 refugees living in shelters have died from COVID-19.

The press office monitors the downloads locally and internationally to check the reach of the podcasts and additional information material.

By using intercultural communication to provide refugees and migrants access to vital information at a critical time, it helped prevent the spread of COVID-19

The initiative was implemented at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and before the first lockdown had begun. There was a general sense of fear and insecurity about how to cope with the threat of the virus, especially in the refugee shelters where many people live together in close proximity. When the idea of using podcasts as the main information tool was first presented, there was some resistance as this had not been done before.

By using audio podcasts and reducing cultural and lingual barriers, it was possible to reach people with minimal educational standards and provide official fact-based information.

In emergency situations, podcasts can contribute to building trust with people while simultaneously providing reliable information.

it is helpful to have a digital platform in place (established social media channels and a website based on a content-management-system that allows the implementation of mp3 and mp4 files).