Initiatives and Responses to Migrant Workers during the Lockdown

This narrative describes an initiative of the National Service Scheme team at Andhra Loyola Institute of Engineering and Technology. It highlights initiatives to address the situation of migrant workers during the pandemic lockdown in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India. In the Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh, migrant laborers were forced to walk home, sometimes hundreds, even thousands of kilometers, to reunite with their families. It was hard to ignore these images, especially those who carried the elderly on their shoulders, and small children slumped over rolling suitcases. Most used any means of transport they found, even bicycles. Some succumbed to accidents and exposure to heat. In the midst of the lockdown, the NSS team quickly came together and planned an outreach/relief camp for migrants in Krishna District. It was chosen since many villagers were migrants and the lockdown had affected in multiple ways. The relief camp took place in the month of April, a time when temperatures soar in southern India. The students and the faculty members joined hands to reach out to the Migrants in the most despairing moments. The students commented that they saw their education from a different perspective, one that integrated curriculum and good citizenship for marginalized persons. One of the ways of infusing relevance into education is to embed it within meaningful service learning. This paper is an attempt to exhibit the Initiative and Responses to the Migrant workers during the Lockdown.

Young women’s (mother’s) needs and expectations regarding the development of professional competences – A comparative analysis of research results from Poland, Lithuania, Spain and Cyprus

Over the last two decades, there has been a significant improvement in the participation of women in education and the labour market in the European Union. Nevertheless, there are still many challenges to improving the situation of women. The excessive burden of household duties is a major barrier to the educational and professional activity of women, especially young women with small children. Apart from the inability to balance work and personal life, other factors limiting women’s professional activity include the mismatch between their education and the challenges of the modern labour market. Although the majority of people with higher education are women, when planning their careers, they tend to choose less attractive courses of study which are not linked to the professions of the future. The text presents the results of an analysis of research on the needs and expectations of young women (mothers) regarding the development of professional competences. The results show in which types of activities raising competences the surveyed women participate; how they evaluate the effectiveness of activities raising their competences in the professional area; what factors influence the decision of women to participate in the selected form of training; what are the attitudes of the external environment of the surveyed women towards their participation in training; what problems the surveyed women encounter in connection with participation in training raising their professional competences. The focus was on similarities and differences in statements of young women (mothers) from Poland, Lithuania, Spain and Cyprus who participating in the international project Mommypreneurs.

Impacts of COVID-19 on parents with small children in South Korea: survey findings and policy implications

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised the importance of care and care work, and exposed pre-existing inequalities. Our survey of the impacts of COVID-19 on parents with small children in South Korea reveals that mothers were much more likely to bear the increased burden of childcare than fathers, which, in turn, had direct and negative impacts on their well-being. We discuss how South Korea’s dualised labour market, gender-biased employment practice, social norms about childcare and instrumental approach to family and care policies may have contributed to the persistent unequal distribution of unpaid care work within households and gender inequality.

SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence and correlates of six ethnic groups living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands: a population-based cross-sectional study, June–October 2020

ObjectivesIt has been suggested that ethnic minorities have been disproportionally affected by the COVID-19. We aimed to determine whether prevalence and correlates of past SARS-CoV-2 exposure varied between six ethnic groups in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.Design, setting, participantsParticipants aged 25–79 years enrolled in the Healthy Life in an Urban Setting population-based prospective cohort (n=16 889) were randomly selected within ethnic groups and invited to participate in a cross-sectional COVID-19 seroprevalence substudy.Outcome measuresWe tested participants for SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies and collected information on SARS-CoV-2 exposures. We estimated prevalence and correlates of SARS-CoV-2 exposure within ethnic groups using survey-weighted logistic regression adjusting for age, sex and calendar time.ResultsBetween 24 June and 9 October 2020, we included 2497 participants. Adjusted SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence was comparable between ethnic Dutch (24/498; 5.1%, 95% CI 2.8% to 7.4%), South-Asian Surinamese (22/451; 4.9%, 95% CI 2.2% to 7.7%), African Surinamese (22/400; 8.3%, 95% CI 3.1% to 13.6%), Turkish (30/408; 7.9%, 95% CI 4.4% to 11.4%) and Moroccan (32/391; 7.2%, 95% CI 4.2% to 10.1%) participants, but higher among Ghanaians (95/327; 26.3%, 95% CI 18.5% to 34.0%). 57.1% of SARS-CoV-2-positive participants did not suspect or were unsure of being infected, which was lowest in African Surinamese (18.2%) and highest in Ghanaians (90.5%). Correlates of SARS-CoV-2 exposure varied across ethnic groups, while the most common correlate was having a household member suspected of infection. In Ghanaians, seropositivity was associated with older age, larger household sizes, living with small children, leaving home to work and attending religious services.ConclusionsNo remarkable differences in SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence were observed between the largest ethnic groups in Amsterdam after the first wave of infections. The higher infection seroprevalence observed among Ghanaians, which passed mostly unnoticed, warrants wider prevention efforts and opportunities for non-symptom-based testing.

The RP3 Program to Promote Language for Early Childhood

Thailand had Family Development Center (FDC) Staff for family promotion and development to strengthen warm relations and social immunization of family members in the community. The RP3 program has been created to enhance the language development skills of people working with small children. This paper examines the effectiveness of the RP3 Program on improving FDC staff skills in early childhood language development in rural Thai communities. A quasi-experimental design was used with 40 FDC staff in each group. The intervention group received the RP3 Program. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using paired t-test and independent t-test. The results revealed that the intervention group had significantly higher mean scores in self-efficacy after attending the program than before, and also significantly higher than the comparison group (p<0.001). This shows that FDC staff may be able to upgrade and change attitudes through intervention programs and have more belief in their ability to guide their parents. This study may be valuable for local authorities and relevant sectors as a guideline for FDC staff by considering the context of the organization and the community.

Discrete Wavelet Transforms-Based Analysis of Accelerometer Signals for Continuous Human Cardiac Monitoring

Measuring cardiac activity from the chest using an accelerometer is commonly referred to as seismocardiography. Unfortunately, it cannot provide clinically valid data because it is easily corrupted by motion artefacts. This paper proposes two methods to improve peak detection from noisy seismocardiography data. They rely on discrete wavelet transform analysis using either biorthogonal 3.9 or reverse biorthogonal 3.9. The first method involves slicing chest vibrations for each cardiac activity, and then detecting the peak location, whereas the other method aims at detecting the peak directly from chest vibrations without segmentation. Performance evaluations were conducted on signals recorded from small children and adults based on missing and additional peaks. Both algorithms showed a low error rate (15.4% and 2.1% for children/infants and adults, respectively) for signals obtained in resting state. The average error for sitting and breathing tasks (adults only) was 14.4%. In summary, the first algorithm proved more promising for further exploration.

“Either We Start from Scratch, or We Close It”. The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Female Entrepreneurs in Transylvania, Romania

Cross-national studies emphasized that female entrepreneurs have experienced a major decrease in income, and there was a decline in market demand as well. The pandemic crisis increased the workload of women, and mainly those who raise small children did not have much choice: they had to invest time and energy in the family. The success of the strategy that could be used during this period lays on the success of balancing the family–work conflict. The following research is based on an online questionnaire that collected responses and data between 2 April and 20 May 2020. Our questions focused on the situation caused by the pandemic, so that through this online survey we aimed to determine how women entrepreneurs in Transylvania coped with the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to get information regarding the financial reserves of the firms owned by female entrepreneurs, but also regarding the human resource reserves of these firms. We also aimed at learning if the pandemic period had an impact on the promoting and marketing practice of the firms and on their sale activities as well as whether there were any changes occurred due to the pandemic.

Overview Knowledge and Attitudes of Parents in the Application of Protocol Health in Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has been declared a global pandemic by WHO. The spread of the Corona virus can trigger anxiety for parents, especially for those who have small children. Transmission of Covid-19 in children is usually caused by weak immunity or transmission from adults. For this reason, families, especially parents, need to give the education, understanding and protect their children from Covid-19 transmission by implementing health protocols. The purpose of this research is to know the description of knowledge and attitudes of parents in the application of health protocols to children during the covid-19 pandemic. This research is a descriptive research by using primary data obtained from questionnaires. Respondents is 30 parents which have children who study at TK Darul Falah Cukir Jombang. Data are analyzed univariate and presented in the form of tabel. The results of the knowledge level variable data shows 26 responden (87.5%) have a good level of knowledge, and 4 people (12.5%) has sufficient knowledge level. The attitude variable data show that all respondents (100%) have a positive attitude in applying health protocols to children during the covid-19 pandemic. The conclusion is the level of knowledge and attitudes of parents in implementing health protocols for children during the COVID-19 pandemic at TK Darul Falah Cukir Jombang is mostly in the good category. Parents are expected to always facilitate their children in implementing health protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19.