Every weekday morning for the past five years, you'd find Mattie Shandon in the kindergarten wing at Chestnut Grove Elementary School in Decatur, Alabama. A volunteer in the Foster Grandparent Program through Community Action Partnership of North Alabama (CAPNA), she would unpack backpacks, go over math problems and make sure her group of students knew the sound every letter of the alphabet was supposed to make.
"I help them keep up so they don't fall behind," Shandon says. "I mark their behavior charts. Purple if they're doing great. Pink is exceptional."
But Shandon hasn't put any colors on charts since mid-March, when she was told she was part of the "vulnerable population," and shouldn't be in the schools during the spread of COVID-19. Then, the schools closed, too.
"It's heartbreaking for everybody," Shandon says. The teachers. The students. And the volunteers who help them. "I miss them," she says of the kids who call her Ms. Mattie. "I really, really do."
Across the country, dedicated volunteers at NeighborWorks organizations like CAPNA are finding that they have different roles to play as COVID-19, a rapidly spreading respiratory illness, changes the way operate. In some places, older volunteers who help with everything from food distribution to teaching have been sidelined. Organizations that rely on college students have found that their volunteer force has gone home to shelter in place. And many are trying to find online work for their volunteers to do.
Chantal Collier, director of the Grandparents Foster Program, says her volunteers love seeing the children's faces daily. "They depend on the interaction and the feeling of being needed. Every time I speak with them, they are just so anxious to get back to work."
From an administrative level, she says, it's hard to do the reporting required by her grant. "It's been difficult for sure," she says.
In Lewiston, Maine, where volunteer drivers take residents to critical well-being appointments like dialysis and chemotherapy, the number of volunteers has dropped from 91 to 41, says Melissa Green, director of transportation.
Wellness checkups and shopping trips have been eliminated as seniors are encouraged to stay home, so the number of rides needed has dropped, too. "Some of the drivers are dependent financially on the mileage reimbursement they receive to help support their families," Green says. "We're trying to find other ways to help." Those ways could include dropping groceries curbside for seniors that can't leave their homes, she says.
"One of our big goals is we want to make sure we're still a constant for the communities we serve," Green says. "We want to explore other avenues as to how we can come back stronger." Some of the volunteers have been with the program since it started.
"We appreciate what they're doing with neighbor helping neighbor," Green says. "If they're not comfortable driving, we let them know that we will take you back whenever you're comfortable about returning." Meanwhile, she's arming drivers with wipes and masks and the latest guidelines for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We believe in volunteers and the work they do. It's important we take care of them in the best way we can.
At Hudson River Housing, administrators have been working to increase the pool of volunteers during COVID-19. Normally, they rely on groups of volunteers who gather together to prepare meals for the guests at the organization's homeless shelter. But "gathering" isn't something that's happening these days, with physical distancing. And preparation spots, like kitchens at religious organizations, may be closed.
Now, says Christa Hines, executive director, volunteers are working out of their homes and preparing meals — when they can find the ingredients. Grocery stores are often empty of the items they usually use, like pasta and sauce and bread. Meanwhile, other volunteers, some of them new, and staff members have stepped up to fill gaps. Even the chief financial officer has spent some evenings preparing meals, she says, while other staff members have gone out to collect meals from local volunteers.
"We're using social media to get the word out about how many more meals we're in need of," Hines says. "We're serving so many more people right now. We've had to really ramp up our efforts."
Their goal is to provide a hot evening meal and a bagged breakfast the next morning for approximately 110 people at a time. "We're also working on partnering with some local restaurants to help supply meals so we're not trying to figure out what we're doing on a daily basis," Hines says. "Our calendar is usually full. This week, we have four nights where we don't have anything lined up yet."
Arra Mowry, who attends New Hackensack Reformed Church, took on an extra night last Tuesday with two friends. But the longtime volunteer says her church can't fill in every time. "We don't have that kind of money. But we do our best to pull together something, even if it's a couple of us going to the store and buying lunch meat and bread."
Normally, Mowry and others work in the church kitchen the fourth Sunday of the month preparing salads and the church's famous beef stroganoff recipe. The homeless guests like it, she says. It's nutritious and includes protein and vegetables. "But now the church is closed."
So in March, when there were still only about 60 people in the shelter, a church member ordered take-out Chinese food and Mowry and a friend drove a van and filled it with egg rolls and chicken and broccoli. In April, she says, it will likely be pizza.
"We've always done adopt-a-night," Mowry says. Even if they have to change the way they do things, she adds, "we're not going to miss a night. We refuse to miss a night."
04/13/2020
