Crowdsourcing to Fight a Pandemic

In response to COVID-19, Philadelphia has a no-questions-asked program that has given out over 72,000 boxes of food for free since it began on March 30th, 2020. It was a team effort between the government and two food banks named Philabundance and Share Food Program. This program is a supplement to the other 350+ programs to help those facing food insecurity in Philadelphia during the pandemic. Despite challenges to the supply chain, they are confident the program can survive because, "the supply chain in Philadelphia is among the strongest in the country."

Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have each "vaccinated a higher proportion of their populations than the rest of the world" due to strategies that included early approval of the vaccine, centralized and digitized health care data management, and cross-sector information campaigns. Although it's yet to be seen how these efforts will fare when the vaccine is released to the general public, they have proven to be successful for distribution to vulnerable people and communities.

Social distancing has negatively affected homeless shelters, because the volunteers who prepare the meals aren't considered essential employees. The city of Cambridge pledged to pay local restaurants to provide bagged or boxed meals for lunch and dinner at shelters for as long as social distancing guidelines remain in place. This also helps restaurants who are struggling without customers. The operation started in March of 2020 and has since distributed 1,800 meals to eight homeless shelters and meal programs. Other cities like Detroit and Portland are following their lead.

In learning what could best work to contain the coronavirus, Italy is offering lessons to other countries in what has failed to work there. Dubbed the new "epicenter of a shifting pandemic" after reporting the highest death count, countries are learning that rapid and early intervention that is communicated clearly is a key component to slowing the spread.

The Covid-19 pandemic complicated health care for women living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Nigeria who already lacked access to family planning services and education, but collaborative efforts are working to change this. Through collective action, a group of non-profits worked together to create a one-day outreach event that provided education and trained community members to carry on the work.

When a hospital refrigerator that was housing 850 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine stopped working, local health officials in Mendocino County, California worked together to quickly devise a distribution plan. Through strategic outreach and localized pop-up distribution sites, the health officials were able to successfully distribute all of the vaccines to individuals before they expired.

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the ways in which the food system is broken, but governments, NGOs, and philanthropists are working to address the discrepancies by connecting small-scale farmers of color with businesses that can purchase their produce at fair rates. “For the first time, they felt connected with a real community. For the first time, they felt they were getting paid what’s right for what they’re growing,” a business advisor for one of the operations explains.

When the coronavirus pandemic forced a restaurant in Vermont to close its doors and lay off hundreds of employees, the owner worked with investors to shift his business model so that he could provide meals for those now without work using the backlog of perishable foods. His initiative has now expanded with donations and contributions from community corporations and has even received funding from the state as it has grown to include “collective community gardening.”

A group of health care workers and social workers formed to help connect hard-to-reach communities in Hawaii to COVID-19 testing and information about the pandemic. So far, they have been able to test more than 200 people who were showing symptoms or who had been at high risk of exposure. The director of the Hawaii Public Housing Authority has also reported that compliance with mask-wearing and other safety measures has increased since the effort began.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations and government agencies are connecting farmers with people in need by making fruits and vegetables more affordable or even free. For example, Bueno Para Todos, a small farm in New Mexico, has planted new fruit trees alongside a vegetable garden, and allows people to pick what they want and pay how they can, either with money or by helping on the farm. Scaling these efforts can be difficult if communities want to encourage growing more local food.