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  • Law Firms Step Up To Help Small Businesses Navigate COVID-19 Crisis

    Lawyers are providing free legal consultations to business owners and health care workers whose lives and livelihoods have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Pro bono legal aid in Idaho is helping businesses navigate problems with vendor contracts, loan assistance programs and HR issues. In New York, Lawyers for Good Government is a nonprofit providing wills for health care workers on the front lines of COVID-19. The legal consultations have proved effective 9 out of 10 times but the volunteer lawyers are unable to meet the high demand for legal assistance.

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  • Minnesota 'crisis mode chaplains' seek to heal trauma of George Floyd's death

    In Minnesota, volunteer chaplains are attending community events at the request of the participants to provide counsel and support to anyone who may be experiencing symptoms of trauma. Before attending any event to lend help, the volunteer "clergy, spiritual leaders and mental health leaders" first undergo a virtual cultural sensitivity and trauma training. During the events, the interfaith chaplains often perform volunteer duties, but also wear orange shirts to be easily identifiable for those who would like to share.

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  • Beach Cleanups Prove Popular And Purposeful During Pandemic

    Since single-use plastic usage has increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations in Hawaii are planning beach cleanup events to pick up the plastic waste. Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii’s first beach cleanup event since the start of the pandemic drew 150 registrations in less than a day. 808 Cleanups is growing its adopt-a-site program where households identify a beach, waterway, or trail they’d like to regularly clean up. Coordinating a large number of volunteers while maintaining social distancing guidelines has been difficult to navigate.

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  • When working for justice, the promotora model builds power in communities even during a pandemic

    The New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia (NSM) adjusted its promotora model of organizing, which relies on neighbor-to-neighbor interaction to assess community needs, due to Covid-19. The immigrant justice nonprofit now runs zoom meetings and phone banks to talk with hard hit immigrant communities. NSM, fundraising with a coalition of 40 other groups, also provides financial support to immigrant families who cannot access federal aid. They gave money to 150 families, with 100 more on the waitlist. They hired a few laid off community members and try to give promotores some money, but funding is limited.

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  • Voting justice group Common Power turns to tech in time of COVID to reimagine outreach

    Common Power has over 2,000 volunteers, mostly white retirees, who reach out to voters and lobby elected officials for things like widespread mail-in ballots. The small, racially diverse paid staff run many traditional voter engagement programs, such as phone banks and voter-registration drives. The organization also focuses on partnering with local organizations and provides extra capacity in the form of trained volunteers for campaigns in 20 states. All programming has become virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic and substantial time has been spent training volunteers on the new technologies.

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  • Fans Without Football

    Europe’s hardcore football fans, deprived of the communal experience of watching their sport in raucous stadium crowds during the pandemic, redirected their energies toward public service projects to help communities cope with the virus. The oft-maligned “ultra” movement, blamed for the COVID-19 outbreak that became the epicenter of Europe’s virus crisis, has made hospital donations, collected food bank donations and delivered food to shut-ins, and made personal protective equipment. The philanthropy has spread across the continent to demonstrate the movement's ability to act responsibly.

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  • Volunteers Bring Coronavirus Testing To Dallas' Southern Sector: 'It's Our Civic And Moral Responsibility'

    To increase COVID-19 testing in one Dallas neighborhood, community leaders, healthcare professionals, and a local church have joined together to implement a testing site directly in the community. Offering 250 free tests per day, the makeshift clinic helps to address the need of community members who may not feel comfortable going to a medical institution that they do not trust.

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  • Prominent entrepreneurs join activists as volunteers in COVID19 response

    Based on one Instagram post forwarding a request from a doctor for protective gear for his hospital, #BYCOVID19 grew into a large-scale clearinghouse to funnel donated supplies to front-line medical workers in Belarus. Fueled by $125,000 in donations in its first weeks, the volunteer-run service opened a warehouse to store and ship all manner of protective gear that hospitals were desperate to receive amid a serious outbreak of the virus.

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  • Women-led mutual aid initiatives in the age of COVID-19

    In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, groups of women around the world have started mutual aid initiatives such as coordinating volunteers to help immuno-compromised residents get groceries and other essential goods and raising money for emergency aid. Women have a long history organizing mutual aid ventures in response to social problems and crises. Though operating to scale can be difficult because it requires a lot of volunteers and coordination, women-initiated groups in the United States and United Kingdom provide aid and services to meet needs not being met by governments and elected officials.

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  • A volunteer army has answered Colorado's need for masks. Denver's jails are one recent beneficiary.

    Across Colorado, grassroots groups have come together to create homemade masks for the state’s most vulnerable populations to protect against COVID-19. Two of those populations are Denver’s Downtown Detention Center and Denver County Jail. Groups like Dena’s Mask Making Army, the Mask Mavens, and even some AA and sober living communities have rallied together – virtually, of course – to use their sewing skills to fill the mask needs, about 3 masks per person, for those experiencing incarceration.

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