Submitted by Pam Leybengrub from Hunter College.
After getting sent home due to this pandemic, I wanted to get involved in helping those in need during this crisis. After having made several trips to my local grocery store to purchase food for my family, I kept noticing that a portion of the people in these stores were elderly. I was shocked at how many immunocompromised people have to constantly risk their health and safety to buy essential goods. I wanted to help mitigate the risks they were taking which is why I created Helpers for COVID19. This organization pairs volunteers who are looking to help out to those who need deliveries and other kinds of help in getting essentials. Safety has no price and the goal of Helpers for COVID19 is to aid in protecting the safety of those who are elderly or immunocompromised. We hope that our organization will help diminish risk by providing those in the more vulnerable bracket a safe and easy way to get any essentials, such as groceries and medication. We also hope to relieve the financial burden that is currently felt by many Americans due to recent circumstances. We have started a GoFundMe that you may access here: http://gf.me/u/xzf3ds to relieve some of the financial burdens for buying these essential goods.
Anyone who is interested in volunteering can sign up under the volunteer page of our website: helpersforcovid19.com or directly at this link: https://forms.gle/LmaipDhdSB7Xwgtw7.
Most of our volunteers currently reside in the New York area, but we also have volunteers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We are open and willing to expand to other states too! Most of our volunteers are also multilingual. We have representation in over 20 different languages. Our diversity in language is important in supporting any elderly and immunocompromised who are more fluent or comfortable speaking in a language other than English. If you know anyone who is elderly and immunocompromised and needs help getting essentials, please direct them to our website! Let's join together and support our communities in any way we can!
Pam (Founder of Helpers for Covid19) :)
