Development and Connection in the Time of COVID-19 : Corona's Call for Conscious Choices

This book looks at the COVID-19 pandemic and its likely aftermath through a four-dimensional prism - aspirations, emotions, thoughts, and sensations to understand human behavior. That perspective opens possibilities to turn the current crisis into an opportunity for positive change; because systematically influencing the various components of our being, individually and collectively, begins by understanding their nature and interaction. Beyond influence this interplay between dimensions can be optimized; which is the purpose of the C-Core (completion, compassion, creativity, cooperation) introduced in the book. In addition, the four determinants that shape institutions: priorities, people, positions, programs - the P-Puzzle are looked at. This book combines theory and concrete suggestions both for policymakers in charge of designing the collective landscape and for individuals who must adapt to, and shape, a new ‘normal’. 

COVID-19 is a reminder that humans around the World are fundamentally the same. Whether in the long run the Pandemic will bring out the best or the worst in humans depends on individual and collective choices to nurture our best individual and collective selves. COVID-19 may either expand life quality by adding a new breadth of solidarity or reduce Society to mere survival.

Cornelia C. Walther has been working for the past 18 years with the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in West Africa, Afghanistan and Haiti, focusing on  the design of innovative communication and advocacy approaches. Her previous books include ‘Development, Humanitarian aid and social welfare’, and Humanitarian aid, social change and human behavior’.