Facing Up  is a UCT-affiliated occupational therapy initiative that is facilitated by Mellisa Francke, Leigh Ann Richards, Liesl Peters and Roshan Galvaan. The initiative focuses on developing and partnering with communities to support social transformation and has grown through partnerships with many NGO’s and schools in Cape Town over the past 20 years (see www.facingup.uct.ac.za for more information).  

In response to dealing with the effects and impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on marginalised communities in South Africa, Facing Up created a platform, using a Facebook group,  to engage practitioners in critical thinking and conversation about how health and rehabilitation professionals could respond to the social, development and health equity challenges that COVID -19 has raised. The Facebook discussion group called, ObCD & COVID-19 takes its name from the Occupation-based Community Development framework (ObCD) which provides guidelines for critical and socially responsive praxis. The ObCD & COVID-19 Facebook group is open to health professionals across disciplines.

To ignite creative and critical thinking through this forum, Francke, Richards, Peters and Galvaan have produced a series of interviews with various health professionals across health and rehabilitation disciplines in Africa. These interviews reflect on shifting practice to promote contextual-relevance and foregrounds actions taken by researchers and practitioners to mitigate social exclusion.

To check out these interviews, visit the YouTube page https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX4Df-bU-8CDi4OrMsWNrNA and feel free to join the conversation on our Facebook page at  https://www.facebook.com/facing.up.90 (search for ObCD & COVID-19).