COVID-19 WIC & SOCIAL SERVICE: Giving Back When You Can -April 10, 2020
During these difficult and confusing times, it’s important that we all rally together to help one another.
Everyone has been feeling the economic effects of the novel coronavirus in one way or another, with some of the hardest hit being small business owners, lower-level employees, children, and healthcare facilities. Many who have the means to give are ready to, but might not be sure where to start. "The New York Times" offers suggestions for reputable charities that are offering help to those who need it most.
- Charity Navigator has a page dedicated to COVID-19. This site helps you find local or national organizations to give to and rates them so you know your money is going where it’s needed most.
- Global Giving's coronavirus relief fund is a crowd-sourced donation effort to provide help to medical professionals, struggling families, the elderly, and school children.
- Relief International provides medical equipment to areas of need around the world. With shortages in many of the hardest-hit countries, they’re working around the clock to get medical items distributed.
- If you don’t have the financial means to donate, consider donating blood to American Red Cross. As uncertainty has spread, so have blood shortages. Healthy donors are needed to ensure a steady supply of blood for emergencies.
- Most children across the country are out of school right now and many (roughly 30 million) relied on school for access to healthy meals. Save the Children is working to provide meals and medical supplies to those children.
- Feeding America is working to provide food to their network of food distributors across the country. This includes 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries.
- With children out of school, some are having difficulty finding learning opportunities without Internet access. First Book has a goal of sending 7 million books to children in low-income communities so they can continue learning during this time.
You can also support your local community in a variety of ways. Some suggestions include:
- Donating food, money, or personal hygiene supplies to local homeless shelters. Many homeless shelters are seeing a decrease in donations as high-demand products are hard to come by. Due to the crowded nature of many homeless shelters, sanitization products are very much needed.
- Fostering or adopting a pet in need of a home, or donating supplies to your local animal shelter.
- Bringing food to your local food bank to help with the food scarcity many cities and towns are experiencing.
Supporting a local GoFundMe for a needy family or organization in your area. You can do a search on the GoFundMe website to find opportunities to give.
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