The COVID-19 pandemic was still ongoing at the end of 2021 with the new Omicron strain. Although the government had implemented measures to control the spread, such as designating risk areas and restricting opening times of places with high risk, the number of infected persons continued to increase and broadly impacted everyone in aspects of health, economy, and society, especially to those vulnerable groups.
However, partner organisations of the EU COVID-10 Response & Recovery Project had by then all received increased experience, skills, and expertise working under limitations in the past, and therefore responded to and revised plans under the project, such as adjusting the type of activity conducted or the number of participants involved to ensure in advance the safety of the target groups and staff, enabling more activities to be carried out than during the first half of 2021. The main activity still focused on building up knowledge on disaster response and food security, to support communities to have a plan to respond to disasters in future, to convey the information from the targeted groups out to the wider public, and to enhance the capacity of partner organisations in carrying out the activities in various aspects.
In the final two trimesters of the project (January-June 2022), each partner organisation compiled a summary and list of challenges from carrying out the activities in order to develop a set of policy recommendations regarding COVID-19 response in various dimensions, such as a forum for exchanging views on disaster response that will drive policy and revise disaster laws, a seminar on future city planning “Creating urban food spaces” that involves Bangkok Governor candidates, and the seminar “Migrant workers and access to relief during COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand” for state agencies and relevant organisations, in order to present the problems and offer solutions to the public, as well as to encourage all relevant parties to carry out responses and participate in solving the problems of the various target groups in a concrete and sustainable manner.