Unsung Heroes (american English) 3c571b

UNSUNG HEROES

Text Diana Holquist and Helena Drakakis, on behalf of StoryTerrace

Cover design Roald Triebels

Interior design Asterisk*, Amsterdam

Copyright © 2021 StoryTerrace

First edition June 2021

www.storyterrace.com

Unsung Heroes

25 inspiring stories of kindness during the covid-19 pandemic

With thanks to

Ali Harris, Alison Jill Thompson, Dr. Brenda Bauer, Caitlin Pease, Chloe & Jackie Bracewell, Eric Protein Moseley, Erin Leonard, Farhan Himmati, Francis Michael Fernando, Emma, Isla-Rose & Lily-Mae Austin-Goodall, Leon Aarts, Lindsay Sherman, Michey Chan, Muhsin “Moe” Manir, Olivia Herring, Opal L. Lee, Paul Wilkie, Pauline Hughes, Robertino Rodriguez, Rajinder Singh, Randhir Singh Sohel (in memory), Soumya Krishnakumar, Tom Bagamane, Victoria Hill, Vikram & Mrinal Seth, and other local heroes worldwide, who have cared for others or raised community spirits during the pandemic—and beyond.

Dear reader,

As the COVID -19 pandemic spread across the globe and businesses began to shut down, it was clear that we were all—suddenly and reluctantly—living through history. We sat alone in our homes, glued to the television with a feeling of powerlessness. But then something else happened. Slowly at first, we began to hear about people doing little things to make a difference. Italians singing on their balconies. New Yorkers banging pots and pans to celebrate hospital workers as they went home exhausted from their shifts. People of all ages turning their lockdown boredom into viral posts that raised money to help those who were suffering. Soon there were stories everywhere, if you knew where to look. Regular people were doing what they could to help others, whether by feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, or just finding little ways to keep people’s spirits up. With so many incredible stories out there, I finally realised what I could do to help: I reflected on the fact that StoryTerrace was founded in 2014 to help anyone to preserve their family history in a book worthy of ing down to future generations. We connect ordinary people with professional writers to capture their stories before they are lost. History books focus on the facts, but they rarely provide insight into the thoughts and feelings of the people who lived through those times. So we at StoryTerrace thought why not capture the most uplifting stories of the pandemic, as they were unfolding? And from this, the Unsung Heroes campaign was born. StoryTerrace launched this initiative to gather the stories of everyday people and

share them with the rest of the world. We invited anyone who had a story to tell to post it on social media or to nominate someone via our website to honour their great work in helping and healing others—especially, during the most difficult times most of us will ever live through. To spread the word about the project, we partnered with Maggie’s, one of the UK’s most prestigious charities. For over twenty years, Maggie’s centers have ed cancer patients across the uk and around the world, helping people through a devastating illness while overcoming isolation and fear. All profits from the Unsung Heroes book will be donated to our two chosen charities: Maggie’s, to help future cancer patients in their time of need, and Unity Unlimited, a grassroots non-profit educational charity dedicated to fostering community cohesion and combatting discrimination in America. As we have seen so often during this pandemic, once the word was out, people delivered. We received over 300 submissions, all of which made us proud to share the planet with such amazing people. To help with the very difficult decisions about which stories to include in this book, myself and six other judges from across the UK came together to share our thoughts. After careful deliberation, the of judges selected 25 stories. Each of the Unsung Heroes honored here received a copy of this book to commemorate their good work. One special hero—Opal L. Lee of Fort Worth, Texas—will also be honored with the gift of a full StoryTerrace biography in recognition of her 40 years of service providing meals to the needy in her community, which she continued to do during the pandemic, at age 93! The result of the Unsung Heroes project is now in your hands. We hope that you enjoy these uplifting stories as much as we did and that this special book serves as a reminder that, even in the worst of times, there are always those who lift us up with selfless acts of kindness.

Rutger Bruining—Founder & CEO of StoryTerrace

Maggie’s

Maggie’s was founded by Maggie Keswick Jenks, whose own experience of breast cancer informed her vision of a new type of cancer care. She wanted to ease the burden on families and bring people together in a friendly space where patients could get the help they needed to become actively involved in their treatment. Maggie’s has grown into a network of centers built beside NHS hospitals across the UK . Maggie’s centers help people take back control when cancer turns life upside down, offering professional for anything from treatment side effects to money worries. Maggie’s is free and usually requires no appointments, though during the pandemic they are seeing people by appointment with limited drop-ins, for those who are visiting hospitals, or referrals. Each center is designed to be a warm, welcoming place, with special attention paid to architecture that s emotional wellbeing.

Unity Unlimited

Unity Unlimited, Inc. is dedicated to helping people overcome racial and cultural division, founded by our leading hero Opal Lee. As a grassroots organization in touch with the very real issues that of our society face, it s the community by providing programming and events, like Opal’s Walk, which bring people together, crossing racial boundaries to its goal of fostering unity and building bridges. For over twenty years, their annual programs such as ‘Opal’s Farm’, ‘Your Voice Unleashed’, and ‘Empowering You’ have enabled individuals to aspire to better futures. Having gained national attention through Ms. Opal’s efforts to highlight the need for Juneteenth to be a national holiday, Unity Unlimited hopes to share her message of unity throughout the country. Like Ms. Opal continues to say, “We can do so much more together than apart.”

Meet the Judges

The Unsung Heroes campaign received a mountain of worthy nominations. A team of seven judges read and discussed each and every one during a lively debate that ultimately left them all feeling hopeful about a world filled with so many kind and comionate people.

Rutger Bruining

Rutger is the Founder & CEO of StoryTerrace, which has made it possible to turn anyone’s life story into a book. The company has created over two thousand biographies for families around the world using hundreds of professional freelance writers, an in-house editorial team and a unique software platform. Rutger has a background as a private equity investor and management consultant. He is a graduate of Columbia Business School and the University of Amsterdam.

Dame Laura Lee

Laura is the CEO of Maggie’s, an independent charity that works to cancer patients by meeting their psychological, emotional and financial needs. Maggie’s centres are located throughout the UK as well as in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Barcelona. Laura was awarded a damehood in 2020 for her services to people with cancer.

Jay Blades

Jay is an eco-minded designer and furniture restorer who applies his craftsmanship and sense of style to every piece sold through his business, Jay & Co. He shares his expertise as a presenter on two popular BBC shows: Jay Blades’ Home Fix and The Repair Shop.

Gordon Wise

Gordon is the t Managing Director of the Book Department at Curtis Brown, the largest literary agency in the UK . As a publisher and agent, he has worked with authors for nearly 30 years to bring their books to print and share their stories with a global audience.

Sunny Hundal

Sunny is a seasoned journalist and social commentator currently reporting for openDemocracy. He has served as a Senior Visiting Fellow in Journalism at Kingston University and is the Editor-in-chief of Barfi Culture, an online magazine about South Asian diaspora in the US and UK .

Angela Epstein

Angela is a journalist, columnist and broadcaster. Her work appears in major UK newspapers, including the Daily Mail,The Times, and The Telegraph. She is also a regular ist and commentator on television programmes such as JeremyVine and Sky News. In her spare time, she works for the Holocaust Memorial charity Yom HaShoah Manchester.

Jane Moore

Jane is one of the original ists on ITV’S Loose Women and has presented several television documentaries. She is a nationally known newspaper reporter and currently writes an opinion column for The Sun. She is also a patron for Help for Heroes and Beyond Autism.

Ali Harris

When patients didn’t survive, we became their husbands and wives, their children and their relatives.

I DON’T KNOW WHY, BUT I raised my hand straight away. “I’ll do a shift tomorrow night,” I heard myself saying out loud. The meeting of senior medical staff had been called in early March. The news that we had been waiting for had finally reached us. “It’s here in our hospital. COVID -19 patients are already being transferred to ICU . There aren’t enough nurses and we need volunteers,” the matron told us. Of course, we’d all seen the pictures from Italy and Spain. I’d even been measured up for a protective mask. I texted my sister, “I think it’s headed our way.” Her reply was lighthearted: “Run for the hills, babes!” Even the comedy memes on Facebook were jokey— people washing their hands for 30 seconds to the Happy Birthday theme tune. But that day, reality hit. If I’m honest, I was terrified. Before I knew it my hand was in the air and my name put forward. I’m a senior operating department practitioner (

SODP ), more used to working in the relative calm of day surgery, but nevertheless I had the skills they needed. I could help. I didn’t know what I could do, but I knew that I could do something. A COVID -19 ward feels very different. In day care, I assist the anesthetist in managing a patient’s airways. I fix people up and send them home. My job there is physical —we are always on the move, and I might do as much as 20,000 steps per day. In the intensive care unit, or ICU , I was glued to the patient’s bedside and the step count was in my head. I must have done 100,000 daily steps under the mental strain. It was immense. People stay in the ICU with COVID -19 for the long haul or they sadly away. All those videos of patients being clapped by rows of staff having made a recovery happened to us. The elation was real. On the other hand, when patients didn’t survive, we became their husbands and wives, their children and their relatives. We had the privilege of holding their hands. That was tough. It shouldn’t have been us, but COVID -19 took away so much.

It had been a while since I’d worked in the ICU . When my son George was young and my husband Clive was working abroad, I swapped the frenetic pace of an emergency ward for a job that allowed me to juggle work and family life. On that first night, when I returned to the frontline, I was assigned the care of a 72-year-old lady. I was nervous, but it all came flooding back. I can take blood sugars. I can wash her. I can do mouth and eye care. I know all these medicines, and I can see when they are due, I thought. Before I knew it, I was pressing buttons and writing notes and my twelve-hour shift flew by. It helped to be busy. Very sadly, my elderly patient had lost her husband to COVID -19 the week before on our ward. He was our second patient to lose their life, and she tragically ed away ten days later. The intense atmosphere of the ward often gave way to small, beautiful moments. We noticed when the sun came up. We told our patients when it was rising and that every day was a new day. When a nice song came on the radio, we sang along. That inexplicable bond between colleagues got tighter. We laughed together, cried together, disagreed with each other, but hugged each other afterwards. I call them my “work family”. There were decisions to be made in my own family, too. Would I need to stay in a hotel for the duration, unable to return home to Clive and George? One of my colleagues who was a single mum took the brave decision to leave her daughter with her parents for three months while she worked. What a phenomenal and difficult decision to make. Then there was the question of whether my personal protective equipment, or PPE , would be enough to protect me. These were all questions that we discussed

before my first shift. “I want you home, mum,” George told me, and I wanted to be home, too. At times, though, I knew he was scared. As the news clips rolled of critical care nurses dying of the virus, he asked me: “Are you sure you don’t have it, mum?” Thankfully, I didn’t. While a wobble room had been assigned in the hospital for staff who needed time-out, my family became my wobble room. My husband and I have been together forever. We started going out when I was fifteen and I’m 51 now. He’s my rock and my soulmate, and he’s the one who greeted me every time I came off-shift, put me in the shower, put my clothes in the washing machine, made me coffee, poured me wine, talked to me, or left me in the peace of the garden to sit in the sun.

My cousin in Australia is a journalist and she also asked me to compile a video diary of my experience. I’d never done anything like that before, but I found it useful. After each shift, I switched on my mobile and ed my thoughts. Sometimes, I still had the marks from the mask across my face. Its tightness was uncomfortable and on one occasion gave me a nosebleed, but I was grateful there was PPE that fit me and that it was saving me. And once we managed to reduce the temperature in the ward, it became more comfortable to work. It must also have been a relief for the patients, whose temperatures were raging. Probably the worst part of my job was comforting the patients before they even got to the ICU . Once there, they were anesthetized and intubated and often asleep for several weeks while they fought the virus. But it was in the emergency room, in the minutes prior to this, that they were conscious and struggling to breathe, knowing that they would soon be connected up to a ventilator. There, the realization that they may never wake up again truly hit them. Of course, it is our job to make that process easier. We made sure they had their mobile phones so that they could talk to their families. We helped them write notes or letters to loved ones, and we also read them letters. It struck me how full of hope those letters were: “Grandad, you weren’t here to plant the vegetables so we’ve planted them today;” “We’re looking forward to digging up the potatoes later in the year and having a Sunday roast together;” “We’re still planning our trip on the Orient Express.” One wife even wrote to her husband: “Darling, I don’t know how to write a letter to you, I’ve never written to you before, you’ve always been there to hear my words.” Again, it was tough, but a privilege to be there. As for those who did wake up, they were left with so many questions. Given that many of them had missed weeks of their lives, we kept a blank book beside each bed and wrote it like a diary so they could fill in the psychological void left by

the illness. Often at 5:00 a.m., when I had a little downtime, I’d spend fifteen minutes summing up their day: “Hi, I’m Ali, I’ve been looking after you. It’s been sunny and the birds have been singing, we’ve given you a wash and you are doing well today.” The simplest messages helped build that relationship between them and their carers. It also helped us turn our attention from the notes and numbers that we normally spend our shifts jotting down and allowed us time to reflect. As well as my family, running also became my crutch. In the months before the pandemic, I’d signed up for the London Landmarks half- marathon, which had to be cancelled. I was raising money for a blood cancer charity, which my mum sadly died of last year. Determined to carry on, I completed the 21 kilometers by doing circuits around my local lake. And, on the anniversary of my mum’s death in April, I took my only day off. I walked with my husband and our dogs in the hills behind our house, and we watched the sun set with a glass of bubbly in our hands. I haven’t thought of that for a while, but it’s nice to be reminded. Although the pandemic peak is over, I don’t think key workers have let down their guard. It’s as if we exist in a state of preparedness, waiting for a second wave or for when we’ll be called back. ittedly, I felt punctured when I turned up for my shift in the ICU , and I wasn’t needed. It felt like waving my son off to school for the first time when all of a sudden I realized he didn’t need me. The true impact of the last few months hasn’t hit us yet.

Alison Thompson

At a time when we need to think of others, seeing things grow takes us away from our own lives and keeps us in touch with the bigger picture.

S OMEONE ONCE SAID to me that a chance encounter with nature is like a chance encounter with an old friend—it lifts the spirits. I heard this when I was completing a set of interviews as part of a community research project for Birmingham University, United Kingdom, and it stayed with me. The project centered around encouraging wildlife in urban areas, but in my mind this meant hedgehogs, badgers, and foxes. I was soon educated otherwise. “You have to start with the pollinators, like bees and butterflies,” another interviewee had told me. “What’s needed is a patchwork meadow across Birmingham so they can move from one space to another.” From that moment on, a seed was planted, and I developed an idea around a community gardening project. I had rather hoped that an environmental charity would pick it up. Before the lockdown, I had met with a couple who explained that resources were thin on the ground and, with social distancing in place, the idea of people coming together seemed unlikely. Perhaps my idea didn’t have green shoots after all… I’m now retired, having spent my career working in adult social care, in particular managing services for older people, those with mental health needs, and individuals with learning disabilities. With time on my hands and in the fortunate position of having a garden and an allotment, I wanted to put my energy into a variety of projects.

Following retirement, I’d worked as an activator for a local Wellbeing Society, helping to run sports sessions for kids during school holidays, even though I was a good 40 years older than most of the other staff. Unfortunately, but understandably, that was shelved as the pandemic hit. Instead, I put my name down to be a National Health Service volunteer responder, a food bank volunteer, and also part of a COVID -19 Mutual Group, posting cards through my neighbors’ doors offering to help with shopping or prescriptions. Some people didn’t need anything but just wanted to connect. I found that I was chatting away to people I’d never met, even though I’ve lived in the area for 30 years. Suddenly, it struck me that I could combine bringing back pollinators to a dense urban area and connecting people through handing out packets of seeds. The Patchwork Meadow project was finally planted. Adopting the same approach that the COVID -19 Mutual Group had used, I posted cards through people’s letter boxes. Each card was customized to the road, alongside a simple message: “Would you like to see a bit of brightness in these challenging times? Would you like to bring back the butterflies and the bees? If you want some free wildflower seeds, text or give me a call.” As well as individuals, I also reached out to faith organizations, schools, businesses, and other community projects. Plus, I started planting my own minimeadows in the grounds of a church in an inner-city area, at an allotment, in the earth patches left on roads, and in the spaces where there were once trees. Although I grow a variety of vegetables on my allotment such as potatoes, butternut squashes, peas, beans, onions, and parsnips, I’m not a gardener and I didn’t know if the seeds would actually grow. Some didn’t, and frustratingly one patch that was flowering well then got sat on by a dog. Then, I spotted a man in a high-vis jacket eyeing up a patch. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was surveying it as the council was planning on concreting over it. “Don’t do that!” I pleaded with him.

But, alongside the challenges, there have been many successes. So far, I’ve given out 160 packs of seeds to an array of individuals and groups. Some people have planted their meadow in their garden; others have used pots, window boxes, and hanging baskets. One charity which s Syrian female refugees, who are particularly isolated in Birmingham, took twenty packs, and the charity even translated the instructions into Arabic so the women could understand how to grow them.

From this encounter, I had another idea. What if I could deliver the seeds to people and they could hand them out to their neighbors who wanted them? That way, people could connect even under lockdown conditions. This plan is still evolving but has now started happening. Another small victory was when I got chatting to a gardener who was working on the grounds of some rented properties. Once he understood what I was doing, he suggested that the landlord, who rented out seventeen more properties in the area, may be keen to plant wildflower seeds in all those grounds. He’s since been in touch and donated to the project in exchange for seeds. Plus, the co-op where my sister works also planted a pocket meadow in their car park and popped a packet of seeds into every Kindness Bag that went to key workers and people having a hard time during the pandemic. The Patchwork Meadow project is now in full bloom, and I’ve even had a logo designed by a graphic designer I met on one of my community projects. Next stop will be to turn it into a charity. I’m now in talks with the council about how pocket meadows could be included in the Naturally Birmingham: Future Parks Accelerator Project, an initiative to enhance the future of Birmingham’s parks and green spaces. Throughout the project, I’ve been keen to go through all the proper channels. Although I like the idea of guerrilla gardening, I don’t want to start digging up grass verges illegally. I just want to make the whole area look nicer and bring back those pollinators that are so important. We are losing them—and wildlife— at an alarming rate, so we must do something at the bottom end of the chain. When people stumble across flowers in a place where they are not expecting them, it brightens us up. And, at a time when we need to think of others, seeing things grow takes us away from our own lives and keeps us in touch with the bigger picture.

Brenda Bauer

This is not how we do life. This is not how we do death.

D URING THE FIRST six weeks of the lockdown in New York City, I hearing the constant, steady stream of ambulance sirens in the background, coming from the streets outside both my office and my patients’ apartments in various parts of the city. It was unnerving. I’m a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in Manhattan, so I was treating patients virtually because New York City was on lockdown, and these sirens were a constant reminder of what was happening in March, April, and into May. We might occasionally comment on sirens, but mostly we just blocked them out and attempted to make sense of the strange new atmosphere of New York City by talking about the news and the day-to-day oddness of the “new normal.” Some patients spoke very little about the pandemic and instead focused on their immediate environment, a new goal they had decided to take on, or even the mundane. And now, it’s catching up with some of them. In the beginning, many of my patients acted as if there was not a pandemic about to hit New York City, and they didn’t change even as it was actually beginning to unfold around us. The denial was surprisingly strong. Especially in my younger patients—millennials, a few college-aged individuals, and adolescents. They did not want to accept that this was actually happening, that it was dangerous and would curtail their lives. It took a while for them to accept it. And as we are seeing on college campuses right now, a lot of young people aren’t entirely accepting it. Instead, they would talk to me about seemingly minor things. It

took some individuals an extraordinarily long time to get their heads around the reality of COVID -19.

One patient in particular, a millennial who was the second-to-last patient I’d see at my office in-person in early March, came in and said, “This isn’t really a thing, is it?” And I said, “Yes, this is a thing. This is going to be a big thing.” She was alarmed by my saying this because I ordinarily encourage her to answer her own, often rhetorical questions. For me to just blurt out my opinion was rattling to her. But in that moment I didn’t care about my clinical training. I had been tracking the COVID -19 pandemic in China and then Italy and was feeling increasingly alarmed and on edge myself. I wanted to be sure that the potential danger was in fact being ed by my patients as a danger, that they were allowing themselves to see the full scope of what was coming. I knew it would be important to treat this as a reality that superseded whatever fantasies they may have to the contrary. I was careful not to be too alarmist, but nevertheless, it shook them for me to be speaking so directly to them. But I’m Midwestern, born and raised, and an important part of the ethos there is to be of use, to roll up your sleeves and do something, to not just stand there looking at a problem, and to get out of your head! So, I defaulted to who I was raised to be at my core. I had already asked any patients I knew to be immunocompromised not to come into the office. And advised two patients to call in sick to work a week before New York City was put on lockdown. Some colleagues and I were talking among ourselves about how to proceed amid what seemed to be imminent, but even with colleagues, there was no uniform agreement as to what was happening and how to proceed. Of course, none of us had ever seen anything like this before. I am fortunate to have a physician colleague who is a pathologist who sounded the alarm early to a peer group I am part of, so I went with what he was saying. For a while, a lot of my patients were managing very well on the surface. In fact, to the casual observer I am sure they looked like they were “crushing it,” working out, applying to graduate school, learning how to cook like a gourmet,

living their “best lives,” ostensibly, with all the extra time on their hands. In reality, many of these people are struggling, trying to get their heads around what they’ve just gone through. They’re a bit more anxious and symptomatic now than they were at the height of COVID -19, and that’s actually to be expected given what we know as mental health treaters. That’s how the emotional defensive system works. It protects us during a crisis, perhaps even overprotects us, so we can push past danger. It was terribly scary in New York City in late March and April especially, and online shopping, exercising, cooking, and baking were all good defenses, as long as people were generally taking care of themselves. But at some point, we must fully experience and feel what we’ve been through. It’s important to face it down the line. And of course, this has been such a protracted experience for so many. At some point, the defensive system begins to fatigue, and we let our guard down. At the beginning of the crisis, people were especially fearful that they would get sick and die. There was also a more vague fear that there’s a danger out there and we don’t know enough about it to understand it in any meaningful way. In fact, we didn’t understand it very well early on. People were more concerned about touching surfaces, for example, and were not even wearing masks, which we have realized since that the virus is aerosolized. Masks have now become the number one defense against contracting COVID -19 when you are around others. And so people had to get their heads around that. This raises the question: Who do you trust when no one really knows the answers? A pandemic is a different kind of trauma than, say, a catastrophic event like a plane crash or hurricane. Or 9/11. When I first came to New York, I worked in a clinic that was a treatment center for first responders and evacuees of the Twin Towers in the aftermath of 9/11. The destruction of 9/11 was abrupt and immediate, a discrete event; whereas this pandemic is a slowly unfolding, mysterious-seeming, highly variable phenomenon.

This is a chronic, shared condition. One day bleeds into the next, taking shape over months, and all-told likely lasting well over a year. No one knows for certain. A chronic picture (versus an acute, abrupt event) is a wearing, wearying, lower-level stress event with no end in sight, interspersed with sudden illness and death for some. The day-in, day-out experience of a pandemic allows emotions and traumatic experience to fly under the radar, going unacknowledged. The unreal, unrelenting nature of this pandemic created denial and pandemic fatigue for those who eventually accepted the danger of COVID -19. There’s a mental vacillation between awareness or partial awareness and denial of the danger. And because we are experiencing the pandemic simultaneously, people think, we’re all going through this and many people don’t catch it and are just fine, and so they minimize what they’re experiencing because it’s shared. Or they might think, so I lost my job, lots of people did. Or, people are dying and I’m not dying. I should be grateful. What’s a little anxiety? Yes, this a global experience, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic. It’s important not to minimize it, while also finding ways to cope with the conditions we are living under without blinding ourselves. It is especially important to recognize how unusual and upsetting it is to see the numbers of people who have died, even people who are relatively healthy, young, and not considered highrisk. This should unnerve us. There has been no way to come together in an embodied way for a funeral or memorial service to acknowledge the grief and the strain and no proper ritual or ceremony. We have lost many of our daily rituals, too, like hugs and handshakes, but also larger rituals and ceremonies, such as funerals and weddings, graduations and such, things humans devised to knit the individual into the family, community, and society. We must recognize plainly that none of this is normal. This is not how we do life. This is not how we do death. So that’s the message I carry to my patients and various communities I’m in. What I think a lot of people, perhaps patients in particular, do not recognize is how much the work of the helping professions also helps the helper, the treater.

I’m not a religious person, but when I’m helping someone, it really fills me up, too—in something akin to spirituality, I suppose. It’s very much a shared experience, and the work is gratifying. Anyone in the helping professions will tell you that. My patients help me cope in ways that they probably don’t recognize. We may not all carry the same responsibilities and activities in this pandemic—but it’s true that we’re all in this together.

Caitlin Pease

I bought ziplock bags and filled them with conditioner, soap, and shampoo so that busy workers could keep clean and be safe from the virus.

I THOUGHT ALL THE workers in the National Health Service were doing a good job and so I started making bracelets to raise money to treat them and to say thank you. My friend Annabelle’s mom, Jesscia, is a paramedic and so I knew people who were helping others to get better. I got the idea to make jewelry because I already had some thread and beads as part of a kit and I’m very creative. It takes me just under a minute to make a bracelet, unless I accidentally let go of the thread and the beads drop off! Then it takes a bit longer. As soon as lockdown happened, I had some more time, too. At the beginning of March, my school, Latchingdon Primary, closed, and I was at home doing schoolwork. I was given lessons by my teachers but after a while, I was mainly reading and the rest of the time I was making bracelets, which I started selling through my mom’s Facebook page.

On the Facebook page, I sold my bracelets under the name Forever Creations, as I want them to last forever. Then people started liking them and buying them for £1.50. Soon, my teachers donated thread and beads to me, and my mom also helped me to buy more materials which I put my allowance toward. So far, I have made over 288 bracelets and raised over £380. But instead of giving the money directly to the key workers, I went to a local shop and bought cookies to treat them. So far, I’ve given out 100 packs of cookies. I also bought ziplock bags and filled them with conditioner, soap, and shampoo so that busy workers could keep clean and be safe from the virus. At first, I handed some of the packages out at the local police station for the officers, but since then, I’ve also helped paramedics, firemen, teachers, bus drivers, shop workers, the air ambulance, and the marine police. Some of them have sent me a card to say well done and thank you and that I’ve been doing a good job. The Essex Marine Police Unit even sent me a police Christmas decoration and a real police marine badge. I also received a Blue Peter badge and a letter, but one of my favorite things is that I’ve been invited by Essex Police to become a Baloo’s Buddy. Baloo is a retired police dog who was injured in an accident. I will a group of “buddies” who get involved with the good things that Baloo does, such as visit people suffering from trauma. And when social distancing ends, the police are going to bring Baloo to my school to talk about her good work, so I’m very excited. My older brother, James, and I have also been helping people in the streets around our home. We asked the lady who delivers Avon makeup around the neighborhood if she knew of anybody who was vulnerable. Once we had a list, we approached them to see if they needed any shopping or their prescriptions picked up. Lots of people wanted us to mail letters for them, too. As many residents were quarantining, we wore a mask and gloves and also gave them red and green cards so they could display them in their windows before our visit. We developed a system so that we knew whether they were shielding, ill, or unaffected by the virus but just needed help. I know a lot about vulnerable people. One of the worst parts about lockdown

was that I wasn’t able to see my grandpa as he is in a care home. He suffers from frontal lobe dementia, and I am used to visiting him and talking to him. My mom used to work in a care home and so we got used to visiting the residents once a week and playing games with them, like Bingo. We kept doing this even when my mom stopped working there.

With some of the money raised from the bracelets, I bought the staff at my grandpa’s care home 50 yellow tulips to thank them for the work they do. I’ve also been sending my grandpa paintings. My gran says his face lights up whenever he sees them. He’s a really good artist, and he’s inspired me to do arts and crafts. As well as bracelet making, I’ve been tie-dyeing T-shirts, and I’ve also made a pillowcase and a T-shirt using my own design. In the past, I’ve collected presents for people in a women’s refuge near my hometown. I made baskets for Christmas, with teddies for the children, and socks, hand-warmers, and jewelry for their parents. I also did the same thing for Mother’s Day. As well as enjoying arts and crafts, I have a love of reading and set up a scheme where I leave a book in a public place with a message in it telling the finder to keep it or re-hide it for someone else. This was because I wanted to share my love of reading but that is on hold for the moment as it’s dangerous for lots of people to touch the same book because of COVID -19. I have been learning sign language with my mom and my brother. My brother, who is eleven years old, has finished the online course but I’m only halfway through as I’ve been busy with my bracelets. So far, I can sign the whole alphabet. I’d like to start making YouTube videos under the name Caitlin Sparkles. I’ve already tried recording some bedtime stories for children, but I haven’t ed them yet. I hope that when my sign language is better, I can use it to sign the stories. Now, I’ve gone back to school. My favorite subjects are math and science, and I also like doing arts and crafts. I’ll still be able to carry on with my bracelet making and my fundraising; the difference is I’ll have to do my homework first!

Chloe and Jackie Bracewell

We couldn’t fix what had happened, but in times like this it’s the small things that matter.

Mother and daughter team

J ACKIE: O N THE DAY OF our friend Kim’s funeral, so many people wanted to honor him, but we couldn’t. Instead, we lined the streets, keeping a distance of two meters, and clapped as his coffin was driven from his home. In these unprecedented times, this was the only way people could show respect. Kim was an old family friend alongside his wife, Martina. Only a few days before, he’d walked into an ambulance, having been taken ill. It was the last time his family saw him. He had no underlying health conditions but he died of COVID -19. It was shocking how quickly it all happened.

Chloe: At the time of Kim’s death, I was staying with a friend. I’d been sent

back from Seville where I’d been at a training camp. I’m a trained doctor, but I was due to compete in the Olympic qualifiers in the 500-meter splitsquat canoeing event in May. With this and the Tokyo Olympics canceled, I’d set up a training room in the annex of my friend’s large house in the middle of the countryside. Several sheep ed me for my sessions. It was hilarious. And every day, I bottle fed them before and after.

Jackie: Kim and Martina had been so kind to us before their own tragedy. I am the headteacher at Canterbury Nursery School in Bradford, United Kingdom, which is a school in a high area of deprivation. No child arrives on track, but when they leave, 60 percent of them are where they need to be in the education system. I also have a special school sitting within that for children who come to us with a range of complex needs, but after I had potentially contracted COVID -19, we had to shut for two weeks. As soon as I fell ill, Martina and Kim sent some Lego over for our foster son, Richard. He’s an extraordinary young man who has had an extraordinarily challenging childhood, and so the pandemic triggered a lot of anxieties for him. The Lego was designed to keep his mind off me being ill and the uncertainties he was facing by not being at school.

Chloe: Just as mum started getting better, Kim and Martina’s household started becoming ill. But Kim’s death was devastating in so many ways. The family really struggled to grieve because they couldn’t be with people. They were also terrified to leave the house, and because of the lockdown restrictions, most of Kim’s friends and family couldn’t attend his funeral. No family should have to grieve alone. We couldn’t fix what had happened, but in times like this, it’s the small things that matter. I navigated Martina through some of the medical questions she had, and I sent her daughter, Kirsty, videos of sheep every day. I hope they made her smile.

Jackie: As well as Chloe being a sounding board for some of Martina’s medical questions, we wanted to give the family everyday practical . We took food runs up every week, and as Martina likes Marks & Spencer’s food, that’s what we bought. I packed the car with shopping and Richard ran alongside for the half mile from our house to theirs and dropped it on the doorstep. I think the family appreciated that we wanted to help, even though we had other commitments in our lives. By now, I was back at

school. My mother, who is in her nineties, also lives with us, and at the same time, we were trying to keep her safe and alive, which was worrying given that she suffers from a chronic lung condition.

Chloe: It was nice to have been of use during the pandemic, especially as I couldn’t compete. Given my medical training, I’d applied to be a 111 caller but I wasn’t needed. Then, I applied to be a track-and-trace caller but the recruitment was also full. Instead, I helped my brother, who splits his time between gp training and running a digital healthcare app called Caidr. The app aims to provide trusted and reliable information on common medical conditions at your fingertips (even more necessary during COVID -19!). In between, I still have to keep up with my training to get to the Olympics, but with everything on hold, I don’t know when any qualifiers will be. If I get to Tokyo, it will be the first time women will be allowed to compete in this event.

Jackie: I am now back at school for the new term. It’s always a hectic time of year, but even more so with social distancing. Two bubbles in nearby schools have already closed down, and so I am doing everything I can to keep open and keep the children at school. Fortunately, parents have been brilliant, and everyone is wearing their masks, even in the playground. As for the staff, it’s really hard to ask everyone to keep away from each other. We’re such a close-knit school.

Chloe: Mum has kept up doing the food runs to Martina’s and we continue to them. But her daughter, Eloise, is the real hero. Not long after her dad’s death, she got involved in the Yellow Heart Campaign. People put hearts in their windows so others know they have lost someone in the pandemic and as a symbol of remembrance. She’s also made a beautiful collage of all those who have lost loved ones. She’s turned something horrible into something positive. It’s also a perfect tribute to Kim. He was so much more than a statistic. He was a magician by profession, and when he died, everyone who knew him started practicing a trick, just so his magic would live on.

Emma Austin-Goodall and her daughters Isla-Rose & Lily-Mae

The great thing about walking is that it’s free and so simple. We just put our shoes on and step one foot in front of the other.

N OT LONG AFTER the beginning of lockdown, I tried to be more creative with how I entertained my two-year-old twin girls. This was something I shared with family and friends over social media, really just to keep them updated and to raise a few smiles during such sad times. Twins, Isla-Rose and Lily-Mae, were born slightly early, so at the start of the Lockdown, I chose to be at home with them. Ordinarily, I work part-time as a geography teacher at Cleeve Secondary School in Cheltenham. Lockdown meant I was now teaching and parenting at the same time. As you can imagine, this was pretty full-on. If I’m honest, I was a bit apprehensive. I’m an active, outdoorsy person and the thought of being isolated and social distancing was going to be a challenge. My husband, Rob, was also working full-time from home, and I needed to make sure he was able to continue working without continuous interruptions from the girls. I started thinking about how I could occupy the girls and also keep myself sane throughout the pandemic. Activities included jumping in muddy puddles, yoga in the back garden, and even attempting to bake and wash up together afterward! To lift everyone’s mood, I was posting the pictures on Facebook, and so many loved my colorful, creative, and fun photos. It also got me thinking about what else I could do to help, so my husband and I started to help in the local community with food deliveries.

I have several friends who work for the National Health Service ( NHS ), many of whom were faced with the crisis head-on. One close friend and mum of twins herself, who is an anesthesia associate, was taken from working in theatre to a covid Intensive Care Unit, working in extremely intense conditions and also having to wear the full personal protective equipment just to protect herself and her family. Each day, she described how she felt so anxious about going into work and what the day may entail. This highlighted to me how much sadness there was and also how ordinary, lovely people had suddenly become separated from friends and family. There I was, enjoying time with my girls at home. It didn’t feel fair and I felt I needed to do more. I came across a fundraising idea called The Big Toddle, which encouraged parents and their children to go out walking in animal-themed fancy dress. The idea was to raise money for a United Kingdom charity called Barnardo’s, which helps vulnerable children. It was only supposed to be one walk, however I noticed how, when we were out and about, people commented on how my gorgeous girls in their fun outfits were bringing some color into the world at such a dark time. Given that I like to have a purpose and love a challenge, we decided to walk one mile every day for five days, and it grew from there. In those early days, the girls were dressed in their pink wellies and cute party dresses that they’d never had the chance to wear because of lockdown. Then we used Halloween costumes. Soon we were using our imagination and stepping out as cats, dragons, caterpillars, lions, and giraffes. As our walking continued, friends even started donating costumes. Then, one dear friend challenged us to walk one mile a day for 26 days—our own lockdown marathon. I agreed, unsure whether the girls would manage that distance, but I was pleasantly surprised. We built it up over a period of time, and on some days, we even walked two miles. As donations started to roll in, we set up an online Just Giving page and split our funds between two charities: Barnardo’s and

NHS Charities Together. To date, we’ve raised over £1,500. While some walks took half an hour, others took longer, as there is a lot to be distracted by on the way. On our longer walks, we stopped to say hello to the chickens who live on nearby allotments, or we’d play in the nearby fields or paddle in the local Ford. Both girls are wonderfully different in personality, but both seemed to love our expeditions. Lily-Mae, who was firstborn, is a beautifully happy little soul, quite independent in her outlook. Lily would often rely on the buggy, so walking has been good to strengthen her leg muscles. Meanwhile Isla-Rose, born two minutes later, is naturally physically robust. She loves being outdoors and makes so many smile with her cute yet shy smile and long blonde curly hair. After a while, both seemed to enjoy the positive attention they were receiving when residents, especially the elderly of the community, smiled as we walked by. Often when we were out walking, we would my parents’ house who live nearby. It touched their hearts to wave at their dear grandchildren from afar, blowing them kisses and sending lots of love. They could not see them in person due to shielding, and they all seemed to miss each other so much. Another surprising benefit was that because I was walking with them and pointing out local flora and fauna, their speech came on leaps and bounds. “How many spots has the ladybird got?” became a familiar saying on our little adventures.

It was only when our lockdown story featured in the local media did our fundraising really take off. It was lovely to see our story in several local and national newspapers, even making front page news! We were shocked when Hello! magazine featured a photo of the twins I had taken alongside their fundraising story. This little positive contribution which we were making suddenly became big news, and while at times that made me anxious given the girls’ young age, the positives have outweighed the negatives. The twins have since won a local competition recognizing them as unsung heroes, and the national Pride of Britain awards, who celebrate everyday achievements, have also ed us. A few weeks ago, with the help of another twin mum, I even organized a socially distant sponsored walk for families with twins and multiples. This raised an extra £140 for Barnardo’s and the NHS .

The great thing about walking is that it’s free and so simple. We just put our shoes on and step one foot in front of the other. At a time when everything seems so uncertain and outside of our control, it’s now become the one sure-fire activity that starts our day rolling. I’m proud too that our gorgeous girls have taken to loving being outdoors. As someone who grew up in Cornwall and by the coast, it has always been important to me that Lily-Mae and Isla-Rose become ionate about being outside and appreciating the beauty of nature. Now, whenever I ask the girls what they want to do, they answer, “Walking! Giraffes! Chickens! Park!” They seem to love it. If they can pick up snails and slugs and go pond-dipping and running through wildflowers, and we can show our appreciation of our key workers at the same time, then it’s certainly great for our own well-being and for the wider community, too.

Eric Protein Moseley

Do you know about the coronavirus?

W HEN THE VIRUS hit, I was in Los Angeles, and I got a vision from God. I was watching television and all of these people were talking about sheltering at home. But how could the homeless shelter at home without a home? And no one was even talking about that. Not one word about it. But these people, they’re still part of the community. You still have to make sure that they’re safe. And nobody was doing that. And so God gave me a vision. That’s how I knew, hey, look, you have to do something to tell the homeless about the coronavirus. My daughter, Erica, lives in San Francisco where she’s an advocate for the homeless. Before the virus, we had started a nonprofit there to link tech companies with homeless people to help them find jobs. So I went to her. We decided to switch gears, to devote our time to informing the homeless about the coronavirus, to make sure that they knew about it. And since I was a filmmaker, I would turn it into a documentary at the same time. We would show the public how the homeless were struggling, and it would also illustrate how a homeless outreach individual worked, to show the tech companies that there were good people out on the streets and how we could help find them. So we started going out onto the streets and asking the homeless, “Do you know about the coronavirus?” Five out of ten people didn’t know. The first girl we walked up to was like, “What? The coronavirus?” The homeless were seeing people walking around with masks, but they didn’t even understand what was going on until we told them.

And they still aren’t scared because they don’t really understand the impact of this. You’ve got to realize, the people that are homeless, they’re off into their own daily activities. We talked to this one gentleman who said, “I’m going to keep it real with you. I don’t care about that.” He said, “It’s like AIDS , when AIDS came out. The people that are out here in the street, they don’t care.” Homeless people believe that they can survive anything because they have survived everything. But this—they just don’t know how dangerous it is. There was one community in the Tenderloin, they told me that the virus couldn’t touch them because they were living in a hotel. We filmed it all, so that their stories wouldn’t be lost, and to let them know that someone was listening. My filmmaking began back in the nineties when reality shows started coming out. I wanted to do a reality show about what I knew the most about: homelessness. I’d been homeless for twenty years, all over America from New York to Los Angeles and everywhere in between. I saved up for two months and bought a camera and started filming Skid Row Journey. I started in Los Angeles, where I had a good job. I was able to save up enough money to go to New York to reunite with my daughter and film some there. When we got to the homeless shelter in New York to film, there was a young guy there, and he said to us, “Look, if you’re filming, then you have to do it for the people, not just to make money.” He had put me in a corner. It was a real crossroads. I realized, maybe I do have a calling in my life. So that’s when I jumped on board. I said to myself, okay, let’s do this. And we got a lot changed at that shelter. That’s where my advocacy started right there. I traded a moneymaking career to get into advocacy for the homeless. I saw the impact that we had, and I got stuck on it. This was my way of giving back to God, because he’d had my back and Erica’s back for all that time I was out on the streets doing drugs and gangs and other things.

Since then, my advocacy has never let up. My main mission and my main goal is to use my filmmaking to be the voice for the homeless. I’ve produced three documentaries so far. Skid Row Journey is about homeless suffering. I then coproduced I’m Down, But Not Out with Dave Adams. It follows me for a day to shelters and soup lines, speaking to people on the streets to show what homelessness is like. It’s been aired on PBS and all over the world. Finally, A Cry to Obama was me speaking to homeless people about how they felt during Obama’s presidency. That one got me invited to meet Michelle Obama. Now, I’m producing a show, In Correspondence with Eric Protein Moseley, as well as finishing our documentary about the coronavirus, The Homeless Coronavirus Outreach. I also have books published that document life story, those of America’s homeless and that of making this new documentary. People ask me if I’m scared being out on the streets talking to people during a pandemic. But if I have to lose my life for other people to be informed about the coronavirus, that’s what I’ll do. People think I’m crazy when I say that sometimes people have to die for others to live. People have to sacrifice for others. I don’t want to sacrifice my life and die. I hope God will say, “Hey, look, you do this for me and you’re going to live.” You know? But I take the risk. So far, we’re good, we’ve been tested, so He’s watching over us. I give God the credit. I’m just doing God’s work. I believe everybody has a calling in their life. I’m a firm believer that my only use here on Earth is to serve God and everything else comes after that. It’s my mission to do what He wants me to do. I am a servant, just a servant.

Erin Leonard

I made her smile. There was a song she always sang with me so I sang it to her as she took her last breath.

W HEN I STARTED my training in child and adult care, I never thought I would go through something like the COVID -19 pandemic. Nothing prepares you for it, and it’s an experience I would not want to relive. Witnessing a resident take their last breath broke my heart, but I want to live my life for them. I was nineteen years old at the beginning of lockdown and my job as a care assistant at a care home in Bristol, United Kingdom, was my first after leaving college. We look after many residents with dementia, so while the sudden change in shift patterns and procedure was confusing to us, it was even more confusing for the elderly who became so scared. First of all, we had to tend to them in full protective equipment. Normally, we are the people giving comfort to them with a friendly face, but now we had masks and gloves and full aprons. At one point, when the PPE ran out, we were wearing bin bags cut with holes for our head and our arms. “I’m Erin!” I’d say. “But I don’t know you…” became a common response.

Sometimes it got so hot that halfway through a shift I was covered in sweat and had to take a shower. I shouldn’t have to do this, I thought. I should have the correct PPE . I’m not garbage. What made things worse was the panicked look on residents’ faces. Some had hearing problems, which made communicating through a mask difficult. It was hard watching them become agitated, which is when their dementia really kicked in.

We have a wobble room at work—it’s a place where we can go if we’re sad or distressed or our shift isn’t going so well. There’s calming smells, or you can play music, and sit in the quiet away from the chaos—just yourself and your thoughts. I needed it at times. Fifteen residents ed away over lockdown. Many were my favorites, and it didn’t get any easier. What made it harder was that no family were allowed in to sit with their loved ones in their last moments. It fell to us to keep the relatives informed, and many were grateful for that. One resident told me, “I’m scared to die.” At first, I didn’t know what to say. “Don’t worry, I’ll comfort you,” I said to her, but I had to take a moment out of the room to cry. I arranged for her to speak with her daughter just before she ed away, but the video phone had to be shielded with a plastic bag. “I can’t see her,” her daughter told me. I had to apologize. I couldn’t take it off. “I’m with her, ing her,” I said. “Look after her, comfort her, send her my love and make her smile,” her daughter asked me. So I made her smile. There was a song she always sang with me, so I sang it to her as she took her last breath. When I think of how I was two years ago and what I’ve done this summer, I hardly recognize myself. I’m a lot stronger and a lot more confident. I was at college when I became the victim of an unprovoked attack outside my block of flats. I was jumped on by a supposed mate who pulled me to the floor and started kicking me in the face. Then, a gang of twenty people ed in. Terrified, I shielded my face with my arms in self-defence and luckily ended up with only a black eye and bruising on my knees. When I got home, I told my mum that I was sure the attack had been filmed and that it would be online, and I was right. The video was all over social media by the next morning, and it had received 100,000 views. It brought me so low. After that, I found it was hard to go outside or even to the shop. I just wanted to stay home. Thankfully, a guy called Chris Winters, who runs a local boxing gym, saw the video and invited me there to train and help me rebuild my life. I learned how to spar and to work out in the gym, but if he found me doing nothing, he’d punish me with 100 press-ups. It was a strict but very positive environment. I think that experience helped me. I was nervous of telling people how I felt

when the pandemic started and hesitant to confide in colleagues. Now, I’ve bonded with everyone. I ask advice from the more experienced of staff and offload about how I am feeling without fear of being judged. I guess we’ve all seen each other at our lowest points. The atmosphere feels lighter now. Our shift patterns, which were turned upside down during lockdown, have gone back to normal. And there’s a whole new cleaning regime in place. We are never allowed to take our uniforms home, and they are washed on site. Our temperature is checked every morning and we are tested for COVID -19 every single Friday. The care home is now completely COVID -free and relatives can even come to visit. I find that equally heartbreaking but in a positive way. I was speechless when I watched the first relatives see their loved ones, even though they have to do it behind a screen and at a two-meter distance. So many of them have commented on how nice it is to see their relatives in the flesh rather than through a screen or just hearing them breathe on the phone.

Last week, one man broke the cordon and kissed his relative. I had to be strict and escort him from the premises. The safety of the residents is everything. Even though I’ve just turned twenty, I feel like I’ve been through so much in the last few months. I’ve truly found my vocation.

Farhan Himmati

One night, the whole family was sitting around the dining room table, brainstorming: how could we have an impact?

I WAS A THIRD-YEAR medical student when I got pulled from my surgical rotation because of the pandemic and sent home. I went to my parents’ house in California, outside of San Francisco, to finish school virtually from there. It was a blessing in disguise, because at least I got to spend the tough times with my family. I couldn’t imagine being in this situation all on my own. So I was thinking about different things that I could do to give back, because I felt so lucky. My parents emigrated from India. They both come from not-so- well-off backgrounds, and they really had to build themselves up through education, build their lives. So they always showed us the value of having money and resources in order to help others. They instilled those disciplines in us: always being humble and giving back. One night, the whole family was sitting around the dining room table, brainstorming: how could we have an impact? We thought about donating food or water. Then, we started talking about people not using masks. With my medical background, that was something I knew was extremely important. I knew we couldn’t give everyone an N95 mask, but maybe we could at least give something.

I said to my mother, “Okay, if we get all the materials, the elastic, the cloth, would you be able to put together a mask?” It started with my mom and a close family friend, Rashida Khan, sewing the masks and my brothers and I negotiating to get the materials as cheaply as we could and trying to figure out what to do with the masks once we were ready. It took two weeks to put together the first 200 masks and to make a plan. Our first drop-off was at the Raphael House, a homeless shelter in San Francisco. Me and my two brothers, Salik and Samee, were all really nervous because we were all thinking the same thing: what if this is dumb? What if she says, oh, we already have masks.We don’t need more masks. We thought that maybe they had said we could come just to humor us, to help out the kids, or something like that. So we get there and park the car and get out our boxes full of masks. We met the volunteer manager, Kellen Sarver, in the lobby, because it wasn’t safe to go in. We were masked and she was masked, but I could see a few residents inside, behind her, without masks, and I had a small hope that maybe, just maybe, they did need these. Because I really wanted to fill a need. That was what this was all about. Well, Kellen took one look at the masks and she smiled so big and said, “This is just what we need.” This is just what we need. None of us will ever forget that moment. We were so anxious about what her response would be. It was such a huge relief. We had so many nervous emotions going into this. Me especially, because I had brought so many people in on this, and I had been terrified that I’d let them down. Kellen wanted to take a picture with us so she could spread the word about what we were doing and how great she thought it was. So that’s basically how we got our humble beginnings. That gave us the affirmation that what we were doing did have some merit and we needed to keep going.

When we got back in the car, we were over the moon. My brother, Samee, said, “Oh, that felt really good,” and that made every one of us in the car smile because that feeling of doing good is a good thing, you know? The first thing we did was to call our parents. We put them on speaker and we were all just fully elated, telling them, “We did it. It was so exciting. She loved it.” My brothers and I kept saying to each other, “Oh my God, I can’t wait for the next one.”

So it became a group project, a big team effort. We wanted to give everyone the opportunity to experience that amazing feeling, how it felt to do something that mattered for someone in need. I’m the organizer, the media guy, the logistics guy. I’m sending out emails and bringing it all together, especially as we expand. My brother, Salik, is a business major at Arizona State University. He handles all the finances, organizes the donations, and negotiates the supplies, so I never even have to think about any of that. Samee is in high school, so he’s extremely vocal about this and gets his friends involved because they’re all super excited. He recruits for the mass drop-offs and goes along when he can. My mother, Saher, sews. And my father, Fareed, is my advisor. He’s an entrepreneur with his own business, Himmati Engineering, so he played a crucial role in helping us get the organization started, teaching me how to handle and distribute roles among the volunteers and how to expand and grow. And my parents were our first donors. We couldn’t have gotten started without them. I was still in medical school through all of this, so I really needed everyone. There was no way I could have done it without my family or the army of volunteers or the people who donated. I was just really a small part of it. At this point, we’ve donated 5,200 masks and 200 gloves to over 60 shelters and nonprofits. We’ve raised a lot of money and we’re still growing. We’re in five states and I hope we’ll expand to more. Nonprofits that need masks are constantly ing us, as well as volunteers. I’m fairly confident that once the volunteers make their first drop-off, they’ll keep coming back because of the same feeling we had when we made our first drop-off. We haven’t really lost a volunteer yet. We made the organization into a foundation because that has been something that’s been a dream of mine from the beginning. I knew that if I was going into medicine to become a doctor, I wanted to start a foundation to provide medical care to those who don’t have access. I eventually hope to create a group of doctors who can donate time to provide much-needed primary care. At the end of the day, I want to know that if everything goes away, like the money and everything, that I left a positive impact on the world. I want to set up something that my friends, family, and colleagues can all to help make a difference together. And if I have kids down the road, they can have this as a guiding light to them, to keep those values.

After I graduate, I’ll be a credentialed doctor. But until then, because of what we’ve done so far, I now know that I can still make a difference, even with a small thing like a mask. I think that was a major revelation for me. It’s really so simple. The homeless can’t get masks. Everyone needs a mask. So why not start there? And if this is just what happened from masks, imagine if I was able to provide medical care, how valuable that would be. A mask is a great thing, but it’s so much smaller than the eventual future goal. But it’s a start and it’s been an amazing journey. I’ve learned so much. I would definitely not call myself a hero, but I would like to say that I’m always striving to be a hero. I’m taking the steps to live a positive life.

Francis Fernando

During COVID-19, too many Filipino staff said “yes” all the time, but we needed to speak out about our fear.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ionate about the welfare and the greater good of my Filipino colleagues. There are around 40,000 Filipino nationals working in the National Health Service and the private care sector in the United Kingdom, but until this year they had no official voice. The idea for the Filipino Nurses Association was actually born last year, but the organization didn’t come into being until the COVID -19 pandemic struck. Being Filipino myself, and having worked in many different hospitals in the United Kingdom for more than twenty years, I understand the community well and have worked in management positions within the sector. I started out in Salisbury, then moved to Surrey, Sussex, and Basingstoke before my last role at Croydon University Hospital in South London. There I was a matron, looking after around 200 patients across inpatient and outpatient wards. I also belong to the Chief Nursing Officer’s Advisory Group, and have been a member since 2012. When it became clear that a disproportionate amount of Filipino staff were dying of the disease, I used this leverage to highlight our concerns.

In total, 56 Filipino colleagues lost their lives in the United Kingdom, which was even more than in the Philippines, which remains at 33. The reasons for this aren’t wholly clear, but we understand there are several factors at play. Firstly, there may be certain biological factors in our ethnic group. While we could not have predicted that COVID -19 would have affected our community as it did, there are historical precedents. Filipinos suffered badly in the aftermath of the 1918 Spanish Flu, and they suffered again in 1968 when the Hong Kong Flu struck, killing between one and four million people globally. There are also socio-economic factors and cultural reasons. Filipino workers are generally poorer and, by nature, submissive. They follow what their managers tell them to do, even if that means putting themselves in harm’s way. During COVID -19, too many Filipino staff said “yes” all of the time, but we needed to speak about our fear. Giving a voice to so many workers has given me purpose. It’s where my energy has been directed over the last few months. I am currently between jobs, so I can work to the Filipino community full-time and on a voluntary basis. I am proud of what we’ve achieved. In April, after twelve Filipino nurses had died, we took immediate action to prevent more deaths. Collectively, we responded by drafting a letter to the Chief Nursing Officer Ruth May and NHS England’s Director of Workforce Race Equality, Yvonne Coghill. We had a simple set of demands: we wanted bereaved families to be given financial assistance. We also wanted help for families who wished to repatriate their loved ones’ ashes back to the Philippines. We requested that a 24-hour helpline be set up for healthcare workers and their families. And, given the high mortality

rates in our ethnic group, we also demanded that a Filipino nurse be assigned to Public Health England’s investigation team. I am pleased to say all of these demands were implemented immediately. But, just as that letter was being sent, I came down with COVID -19 symptoms myself. Suddenly, I lost all sense of smell and developed a bitter taste in my mouth. My dry cough wouldn’t shift and my chest felt tight. I became so scared, especially when my temperature began soaring. I quarantined at home, ate as many fruits and vegetables as I could, and took Vitamin C tablets, but I can honestly say that I’ve never experienced anything like it before.

I recovered, but other Filipino colleagues fought for their lives in icu. Many thankfully survived, but we also lost so many. With so much happening, it’s hard to find those moments to reflect on what our community lost, but we had to as a team. Some families wanted time to grieve, and so we respected that. Others were angry and wanted answers. They were frustrated because they felt their loved ones died because they’d been left unprotected. These are unprecedented times, and so naturally there were lots of questions. So we advised families, comforted them, and also signposted them towards other resources and help. As an organization, we also wanted employers to understand the Filipino contribution to the sector and for our work to be valued. We participated in nationwide protests with many of our colleagues calling for the government to award pay rises to all nurses and other care workers. We also fundraised to help our Filipino colleagues, especially in the care sector, who went unpaid while they shielded or quarantined. One Filipino bank donated £17,000 to the cause and one young fundraiser called Bianca Hanbury- Morris, who is half British and half Filipino, also donated to us through her charitable group Balik Bayani. In total, we raised £20,000. While we helped give a voice to our community, we also recognized that we have to become more assertive. In the future, there may be a second wave or even a third wave of the virus and, if that happens, we need to engage with our national leaders. As well as raising our concerns with the United Kingdom Parliament for Women and Equalities Committee, we have also opened dialogues through the Royal College of Nursing roundtable discussions with Labour mps on health and immigration matters. In our own community, we have organized assertiveness training workshops and personality workshops and sought to develop leadership skills all over the United Kingdom, either through one-on-one coaching or in a group. We recognize that we must engage with the government in a way that we haven’t done before. Our aim is to reach 18,000 through our organization. We can’t ignore the many deaths in our community. The failure of the system was to protect, but

our

Leon Aarts

In the refugee camps in Calais, the government and the police became the enablers of hunger. This time around, we’re fighting COVID-19.

N O ONE NEEDS TO be hungry.” I wrote that in a Facebook post before the start of lockdown on March 18th. “I want to feed people: who wants to help?” By March 21st I had a kitchen and a small army of volunteers, and 400 meals a day were being prepared. Within four weeks, we’d sent out 60,000 meals and, to date, we’ve cooked 400,000 and counting. In many ways, I knew exactly what to do. Pandemic fear feels different, but the similarities between this and the height of the 2015 refugee crisis are clear to me. My background is in food—both as a fine-dining chef and as a fine-food supplier—and five years ago I was embedded in the French migrant camp the ‘Jungle,’ to organize the feeding of 10,000 people. This year, I could foresee restaurants closing and people losing their jobs. Food poverty, which was already on the rise, would soar further. In Calais, the government and the police enabled hunger: as the number of refugees grew, they made it more difficult for volunteers like me to bring in food and cooking equipment. They used rubber bullets on the camp’s residents, and in 2016 they dismantled the tents with ''bulldozers in the most aggressive way possible. This time around, we’re fighting COVID

-19.

In those first few days, the roads of London fell silent. I could sense the fear around me. But I couldn’t sit home and do nothing. One morning I woke up and told myself that I needed to be razor-sharp, focused on one goal, and refuse to let anything get in the way. People immediately started offering their help, and it felt so positive. “You’re good at this!” people encouraged me. In fact, I’m terrible at lots of things—but food and giving are my sweet spots. We called the response Comion London. In the first few months, the kitchens at Wembley Stadium became our temporary home. Cancelled sports events meant one of the largest kitchens in England was lying dormant—so myself and a team of volunteers moved in. We had two vans donated to us, which grew to six, plus an app which meant we could route the vans to where they were needed. A few restaurants that had been forced to close donated their surplus food and we also set about partnering with food charities like The Felix Project and City Harvest, which rescue surplus food from the food industry and redirect it to frontline charities and the vulnerable. There’s fruit and vegetables and a variety of meats. Most of the food is beautiful. The initial need was clear: key workers, including National Healthcare Service staff, police officers, and firefighters had to be fed. We supplied around twelve hospitals, including Great Ormond Street. When that tailed off, we turned our attention to the local community. In particular, there were children who sat just above the threshold to qualify for free school meals, but who I knew were going hungry. We had to reach them. Another sector we identified was the homeless community, who had been removed from the streets and temporarily housed in hotels. There was no provision to cook for them, so we started delivering hundreds of meals a day through a homeless charity, as well as cooking for the elderly in care homes. The virus limited the extent to which we could interact with recipients, but through food, we were saying, “We are here for you. We’ll look after you.” Some messages really stick in your head, and one from a lady in South London still resonates. “I’m a single mom and a cancer survivor with a three-year-old.

We’re shielding and we’ve eaten ice cream for the last four days,” she wrote via email. We didn’t have the network or resources to get to her at first, but the thought of her kept us going, and soon we found our way to delivering meals to her and her son. As much as we helped her, she did the same for us, motivating our work and keeping us on track. When you don’t feel well or you’re under great stress, good food has an amazing power to heal. It evokes childhood memories; it provides comfort and nutrition and naturally adds to better mental health. For this reason, and because of my background in the restaurant trade, I wanted to cook a wide variety of food that tapped into all the senses. Again, I learned in Calais how important variety is. After three months, we moved our base to the kitchens at Alexandra Palace in North London and our group of volunteers had expanded to around 400. There we were able to add even more variety: curries, stews, roasts, pasta Bolognese, mac n’ cheese, falafel with salad and dishes like frittatas are all regular staples we dish up there. And I’ve been very lucky. Some of the first people who ed me were trained chefs with no kitchens to go to. They never know which food is turning up each day, so their creativity takes over. Others who ed in just love cooking, or have never volunteered before and simply wanted to help. The range of skills that we’ve attracted means that I now have around seventeen people working in the kitchen at any one time: receiving food deliveries, cooking, packing and labelling each dish before the meals are taken out for delivery by several outside partner charities. People are ionate and try to overcome the obstacles which naturally arise. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. In 2015, when my friend Jonathan first asked me to cross the Channel and set up the marquee in the Jungle and begin cooking, I was just as determined. I became even more so after the government and police moved in and made it more difficult to cook: at one point, they even banned cooking, hoping that the refugees would just turn around and leave—but that was never going to happen. Many were already fleeing war and other crises. Where would they go? Instead of us cooking for them, we sourced burners and pots and pans and handed them out to people alongside milk and bread and spices and ingredients. All the time, I kept asking myself, “How can being human ever be illegal?”

With COVID -19, the obstacles are different. When we applied for government funds at the outset we were told we had to produce three years of s, but we’d only been running for a month. It felt like we’d already hit a brick wall, but with private donations and a focus on keeping our costs minimal, we’ve managed. I joke that when this is all over I’m going to start a business and employ all our volunteers but never pay them. People seem to work harder when there’s a purpose and no money, and it’s amazing the time and energy people give. We’ve been able to provide everyone with proper health and safety training, too, which opens up more possibilities. My son, Otis, who’s in college, has also ed our staff and is here almost every day, while my daughter, Isis, plans to visit in time. What’s remarkable is witnessing the power of a simple idea. The same happened several years ago when I started a project in my home country of the Netherlands called ‘Fill the Cup’. Then, diners were asked to add fifteen cents onto the cost of their restaurant meal, which went towards feeding a child in a developing country. That idea has now been replicated many times over and in many different countries. It changed my life and it was rewarding to watch it change the lives of others. For the moment, my plan is to continue working from Alexandra Palace for as long as we can. At some point, the venue will want to reopen, but I’m already talking to an organization about building a permanent kitchen in East London. I want to supply vulnerable people throughout the whole of London, and attached to this would be a social eating space for the community—the need for which has been highlighted in the aftermath of the pandemic. My vision is that this doesn’t stop in London and it doesn’t stop after the pandemic. When we all come together, we can feed everyone.

Lindsay Sherman

It had been my day off, but they called: “we need you to come in. It’s a bad day.”

W HEN THE COVID -19 crisis first started in China, I wasn’t really scared because it hadn’t reached the United States yet. I work at a nursing home in New York City. Initially, we had one patient who had it, and that patient was sent out the same day to the hospital. We have close to 300 people in our facility, and nobody else started to have any symptoms. I coming home and telling my family, “We had a covid patient in the building.” That must have been either late February or early March. It felt contained, and we only had a few more cases subsequently. That was until the New York State Department of Health put out an order that the nursing homes in New York State had to start accepting COVID -19 patients from the hospitals. They were overrun. I received the memo in my email. I it was late at night and I couldn’t believe it. We had no choice; we had to start itting anyone from the hospital with COVID . It made no sense to me.

The medical staff had worked hard to keep the spread of infection under control. But, once the memo had been released, things really took off, not only in our place but in lots of nursing homes across New York. Every day, our new issions would be almost all COVID -19 patients. The hospitals had stopped elective surgery, so a lot of the patients who would usually come in for rehab after a hip replacement or a knee replacement were no longer coming. We had separate COVID -19 floors. That was required. All of the facilities did. They could only be itted to a floor with all other covid patients.

Luckily, we were great with Personal Protective Equipment from day one. We’re great to this day. We still have boxes and boxes and boxes in case there’s a second wave.

At first, we had one social worker quit. She was scared. And then two of the other social workers mothers’ sadly ed away from covid. And so for a time, they were out as well. It was hard—we got really overwhelmed at that point. But we had the equipment and the patients needed the care. Friends and family were very worried about me. I have asthma, an underlying condition. And everyone was telling me—everyone!—please quit. They were begging me. They said, “We’ll help you out the next few months until this goes away.” But it was never about money. I just felt it was my duty to be there and help. So we did it. It was scary to be around so much death. A few coworkers also contracted the virus, one of them not too far from my age. Later, we got notified that they had tragically ed away from covid. Maybe four or five, something like that. All different backgrounds, different positions, but they had all dealt hands-on with the patients. Maybe they had underlying conditions themselves that we weren’t aware of. Who knows? But it was very sad. There were a few times I would just call my family or my boyfriend, crying. And after the deaths of my coworkers, that was when it was really bad. It was a real wake-up call. What am I doing? Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. But in the end, I just felt like it was my responsibility. I wanted to be there for the patients. We’ve had a visitor ban since March in all the nursing homes across New York State. So not only did I see people dying, but they were dying alone. And it’s the social worker’s role to step in, to be there for them, to be their family who couldn’t be there. Some of them were cognitively compromised, but some of them were alert. We would also have to call the family to discuss advance directives, what their wishes were. We always review advance directives—it’s part of the job—but as some of the patients who had COVID -19 were declining, we had to have these conversations with their families again. If they were alert enough, we could discuss it with the patient.

Our regular patients were all on separate floors, but a lot of them were still scared and they missed their families, too. We had to provide extra for them, to make sure that FaceTime calls were being done with their families. They were just scared and lonely, depressed. They missed their families. I missed my family, too. To this day, I haven’t seen my family except from a distance. My parents are at an age that puts them at a higher risk. I miss them terribly. And I miss my sister, too, so much. We all go for walks. We go to the park, social distancing. But it’s not the same. We’re all very close. I’m always with my family. On my birthday, on other family ’ birthdays, that’s been tough. And then I actually lost my grandmother in April, not to COVID , but it was still very difficult. We were just so close. My family was nervous about me visiting her. But thank God I did get to say goodbye the night before she ed. We had to do a small funeral graveside, ten people. She just deserved so much more than that. The worst day we ever had was in April. There were so many people who were declining, and I had to call the families to discuss advance directives and make hospice referrals. It had been my day off, but they called: we need you to come in. It’s a bad day. I’m always on call, but this was the first time they’d ever asked me to come in on a weekend. They gave me a list of people who were declining. It was my job to call the families, let them know. It’s devastating. People are crying on the phone, sobbing, and they can’t come to visit. To this day I try to block that out of my mind and not think about it.

You have to take a moment between each call. Hearing family after family crying—it’s just really a lot. That night, by the time I left, it was dark out already, maybe seven, eight o’clock. I’d been on the phone for at least seven hours straight, talking to family after family, after family, after family. There were just so many. I was dedicated to my job—my duty— and still am to this day.

Michey Chan

When I was young I wanted to be a unicorn or a soldier. I don’t know if I’ve inspired some children to be chefs, but I saw a twinkle in a few eyes.

C OOKING EVOKES memories and reminds me of my grandmother, who I gained my love of cooking from. My dad ran a Chinese restaurant and my mom was a pastry chef, but it was really her who I did all my home cooking with. Comfort food, and the memories that the flavors bring back, inspire me. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas and carrots out of a can—that’s the one dish that takes me right back to the kitchen in Ontario, Canada, where I grew up. Cooking for me is like breathing, but for many of the children I cooked with over lockdown, it was the first time they had eaten a vegetable. As someone who cooks from scratch, I found that shocking. As the pandemic approached, I was the head chef for staff dining at the Dorchester Hotel, in Central London. However, at the beginning of March, I found myself in another world: an elementary school in East London. The school, Manorfield Primary in Poplar, London is run by an amazing headteacher called Paul Jackson. As a result of COVID -19, the staff responsible for the school’s catering were unable to return to work. Paul decided to reach out to his at the Dorchester for a helping hand.

In many ways, much of the groundwork had been done by Paul. He’s created a garden in the school and they grow all sorts there: fresh herbs, beetroot, salad leaves, squash, and spinach to name a few. Healthy eating is at the core of the kids’ learning, but Poplar is not a wealthy area of London and I could see that many children did not enjoy home- cooked food, and even went hungry. To the best of our abilities, we provided a hearty breakfast for the children in the morning and a balanced, tasty lunch. With the breakfast club starting the day, and the cooperation of the chefs, we managed to make sure that everyone could be well fed. At first I was cooking for ten or so children, but at times this rose to 70. That’s easy for me. At the Dorchester Hotel, I’d cook for between 500 and 1,500 people on a daily basis. Back in Canada I was part of a team who cooked for the British Royal Family. As I , Queen Elizabeth II ate Bannock bread alongside Three Sisters Soup and quail. We took Native American food and transformed it into a fine dining experience. Cooking demonstrations are second nature to me, too. My own three kids are grown up now, but when they were young I used to turn up to their school and teach. I’d say to the kids: “Food is art. Instead of using paper and pens, you can use food.” Then, I’d carve a swan out of a melon in less than a minute. That’s how I usually start my cooking lessons. Food is fun, and I could see immediately that a few children at Manorfield liked making bread or cutting cookies. I don’t know if I inspired some of them to be chefs, but I saw a twinkle in a few eyes. When I was their age, I wanted to be a unicorn or a soldier. I never imagined that I’d follow in my parent’s footsteps. The food I normally cook at the Dorchester Hotel is top quality, and I cater for all different kinds of nationalities who work there. On any given day, there’s anything from Shepherd’s Pie to Buffalo chicken wings. I don’t just cook curry. If I know someone is Sri Lankan then I’ll research Sri Lankan curries, and if I get the name wrong, I’m usually corrected! I wanted to bring that same variety and quality to Manorfield. Good, healthy, nutritional food should be at the heart of every child’s lessons, and what was great was that they could harvest the food at the site and then see it transform

into a dish.

At first, most kids were a bit scared to approach us because of COVID -19, but they adapted quickly to the social distancing rules. The kids with special educational needs were a bit trickier to control and they sat in small bubbles. Nevertheless, they all treated the days like a fun summer camp. I was also fortunate to have chefs from Yotam Ottolenghi’s kitchen come and help out, too. And, as 90% of the food was vegan or vegetarian, the vegetables took center stage. The simplest ingredients are the best ingredients, and often I didn’t even tell the kids that a dish didn’t contain meat. I called the vegetable lasagne simply ‘lasagne’ or, if I used soy mince in the bolognese, it became just ‘bolognese’. They ate it all the same. I believe that over those three months we changed children’s attitude to food. I hope we changed some of their parents, too. Suddenly, these kids were taking leftovers home and asking for the same meals to be replicated by their moms or dads, who started ing me for recipes. Paul told me many of the parents don’t know how to cook, but we seemed to have created a domino effect. Paul was ionate about reaching out to help families in need in the local community. Together, we came up with a plan to start producing up to 500 food baskets for collection every Friday, ready for home cooking. While I kept the ingredients simple, I still had questions. “What is it and what do I do with it?” asked one parent when they received a pepper. Yet, suddenly food became a connection between us all. My relationships with some of the kids became like those of old friends. Each child connected with food in a different way, but naturally, I had my favorites. If some kids helped out more than others I’d promise them extra dessert. This was usually something like a cinnamon bun made with dates instead of sugar—the kind of comfort food I had cooked when I was a kid. As I say, food taps into memories, and that’s all I tried to do with the kids at Manorfield. I’m no hero. I was just somebody doing a job and doing the best with what I had.

Muhsin “Moe” Manir

If we stopped working, key workers wouldn’t be able to reach work and more people would die.

E VERY EVENING WHEN I came home during the COVID -19 pandemic, my wife placed a black bag in the hallway so I could empty my clothing into it as soon as I entered our house. I also slept in a small store room for several weeks. Being pregnant with our first child, she couldn’t take any chances, especially as I am a London bus driver and trade union activist working on the front lines. My regular route starts at London Victoria Station and heads east towards Surrey Quays. I am also part of the trade union known as Unite, and represent workers at a South London Bus Depot in Camberwell. Alongside this, I’m elected to volunteer regionally as part of a decision-making industrial committee which focuses on the strategy to improve working conditions of the enger transport section of London & Eastern. We had been alerted early to the threat of the pandemic through our bus workers who had been returning from places like Thailand and who needed to selfisolate. This prompted a discussion with employers about whether workers would receive pay, and we successfully argued that if they didn’t, they would come to work and jeopardise the safety of others.

At that stage, the pandemic didn’t seem real, but when workers closer to home started getting sick and going to icu, its full impact hit us. All the reports were saying the virus was spread through human so, as a union activist, I knew we had to change the way we worked. I needed to find a way to communicate this to workers and the company I work for constructively. Initially our approach was good- humored. We put some funny videos on Facebook telling drivers not to shake hands with fellow workers, but instead to touch elbows, or even feet. But when lockdown was announced the atmosphere turned far more serious, especially after late March when, shockingly, our colleagues started dying of the disease. I had to think fast and use what communication networks were available. Fortunately, I’d started a Facebook group a couple of years earlier to campaign for more toilet facilities for drivers. Many of the routes do not have toilets at either end, despite the depots catering for around 200 to 700 workers. Now, with a health emergency on our hands, I encouraged my 3,200 group to use the platform to report their concerns. I managed to get over a thousand additional ers, bringing the total to 4,400.

Much of communicating to an employer is about giving workers the confidence to highlight their problems. Of course, in some circumstances, employers will respond by disciplining staff, but in this case, we desperately wanted to prevent a bigger crisis by sharing problems, ideas, and solutions, so additionally we asked drivers to post pictures on social media. This strategy gave us an early victory. By the beginning of April, five drivers had sadly died and workers were becoming scared. One driver posted a picture of him covering his cab window in cling film to stop the spread from engers. When others followed, this prompted Transport of London (TfL) and employers to issue full Perspex screens. It was very courageous of that driver to post, and it buoyed everyone’s spirits that TfL were listening. Next, we started ing pictures of filthy buses, and we sent them to the radio station lbc where the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was regularly interviewed. On seeing them, he confessed to being embarrassed that workers were not being respected, and soon antiviral deep cleaning was ordered on every bus in the Capital. As the numbers of colleagues who had lost their lives reached fifteen, we were in danger of constructive change turning into deeper frustration and anger. Amid calls for the whole network to be suspended, I was keen that we did not act in bad faith. If we stopped working, key workers wouldn’t be able to reach work and more people would die. “Our actions now of organising and standing up for proper protection will be the best tribute and solidarity for those we have lost,” I wrote on my Twitter . All the while, I was talking to the families of the bereaved, and listening to stories of their unimaginable loss. I understood their anger and their search for answers but I told them the best way to honor their loved one was to become more connected to the cause. I was speaking from experience. When I lost my dad to dementia in my mid-twenties, I found dedicating time to a dementia charity channelled my grief in a positive way. And we were making more positive strides in our campaign. At the height of the pandemic, we managed to persuade TfL and employers to temporarily cordon off the front door of the bus, only allowing engers to enter from the middle.

This was started by one brave worker who closed his front door, but the ‘Seal off the Front Door’ campaign (as it later became known) wasn’t an easy win as TfL had to concede revenue, but it achieved the best outcome for workers. Plus, we successfully fought for vulnerable and shielded workers to be furloughed, meaning they still received pay. I told those workers not to be ashamed of their illness, but to speak up, which they did. Sadly, I believe if we’d achieved those gains earlier, we would have saved more lives. In June, while my employer agreed to furlough me for a short period, I was able to witness the birth of my beautiful daughter Inayah, while I continued with my union work. In all the distress of the pandemic, she is the one thing that has kept me and my wife going. She is our little baby born during COVID -19, when so many people around us lost their lives. I also hope that I have made my dad proud. During his life he worked tirelessly to help the community. He became Mayor of Tower Hamlets, the area of London that I grew up in in a large British Bangladeshi family. I am the only son among six sisters and one of my younger sisters, Apsana Begum, is now a Member of Parliament. We learned about the road my father took and we’ve followed it. We share our condolences to the bereaved families, their loved ones, and friends. COVID -19 has highlighted the importance of communication and, for me personally, ing a trade union, to ensure that all voices are heard in order to save lives.

Olivia Herring

It all started from the moment I said to Dad: “I’d like to do something for the NHS. I’d like to put a cake in your face.”

I ’M IN FIFTH GRADE AT St. Johns School in Sandbach, United Kingdom, and I live with my mom, Sarah, my dad, Thomas, and my younger sister, Amelia. When lockdown happened my elementary school closed straight away. I missed my friends, especially my best friend Rhianna who I’ve grown up with, but I also had to get used to being schooled at home. Mom and Dad stayed home with us, too. My dad is a carpet salesman and both he and Mom run a carpet shop. Because of the pandemic they couldn’t work either. The shop had to close and Dad couldn’t go into customers’ houses to fit carpets until the restrictions were lifted. With all of us at home, we went a bit crazy. There was lots of time and we got a bit bored. Then, one day, I said something to Dad that sparked an idea. We had been baking cakes on Good Friday ready for Easter, and I told him: “I’d really like to do something for the National Health Service.” He agreed it was a good idea, and that we should do something that involved baking and cakes. “Yes, I’d like to put a cake in your face!” I laughed. The whole thing started from there. I thought that we could film ourselves playing the game of rock, paper, scissors, where two players count aloud and chose which shape their hand will make. Scissors beats paper, paper beats rock, and rock beats scissors. It’s really simple, and whoever lost got a pie in their

face. We called it the ‘Cake in ya face challenge.’

At first, I wanted to raise £500 for the National Health Service, and so we ed a picture of Dad being pied by Mom with a large cream cake. Dad says Mom nearly took his nose off, and after a few weeks of us all being on lockdown together, Mom says she really enjoyed doing it. We ed the video onto Facebook and shared a link to the fundraising page at the bottom of the video. We planned the challenge so that everybody who took part nominated other friends and family, so the game would keep spreading. I also played rock, paper, scissors with my sister Amelia, but she lost and got pied too. After Mom and Dad shared it with their friends, I soon raised the £500, but not long after that it jumped to £5,000 and just kept going. People said they loved it and it made them laugh because they had been in lockdown so long. Even famous people started doing it, like the chef James Martin who said thank you for ing the National Health Service on his video, and an actor from the British soap opera Emmerdale, Joe Plant, also took part. Now, I’ve raised over £34,000 for the NHS . I had no idea it would be as big as it was. On my fundraising page I said I wanted to help key workers on the frontline in the NHS risking their lives every day up and down the country. I wanted them to know how much we were thinking of them all at a very challenging time. I’ve been looked after by the NHS since I was a baby, as I suffer with Cystic Fibrosis. I was three months old when I first got diagnosed with the condition, which mainly affects my lungs. Although I have a mild form, Mom and Dad were very worried at first. Fortunately I had a brilliant doctor called Dr. Julie Ellison, from

Leighton Hospital in Crewe, and her amazing team looked after me up until the age of eleven and made Mom and Dad feel that everything was going to be okay. She is retired now, and I have a new doctor called Dr. Susan Southward, who is also brilliant. But over lockdown I’ve been doing all my appointments and check-ups over FaceTime. I also need physiotherapy twice a day. Mom and Dad used to do this but now I have an amazing machine called an Acapella that sends vibrations into my lungs and clears them.

Because I know how much the NHS doctors and nurses do to help, I was also out on the doorstep with Mom, Dad, and Amelia clapping for them every Thursday evening. I didn’t feel as if I was doing much with my ‘Cake in ya face challenge’, because all I’d done was post a video on Facebook, but then I started getting emails and messages from people as far away as Canada and Australia. They told me how much it had made them laugh at a difficult time. People were being pied by friends and family with cakes made of shaving foam, cream cakes, sponge cakes, and jam cakes. They were all really funny. Then, the nurses at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge sent me a card to say thank you and a picture of the nurses on the ward. Dad says it brought a tear to his eye. On the thank you card they had written: “We stay at work for you to stay at home for us.” Other pictures started arriving of nurses thanking me with messages that they’d also posted on their wards. I was even interviewed for the local radio station and appeared twice in the local paper. I was a bit nervous about being interviewed, but when it was played lots of people heard it and told Mom and Dad that they couldn’t believe what I’d done for the NHS and how proud they were of me. I’ve now been nominated for a Pride of Britain Award in the ‘Young Fundraiser of the Year’ category. Piers Morgan asked for people to be nominated on his breakfast television program. When I was asked on the radio which star I’d like to cake in the face the most, I said his name. Maybe I’ll get the chance to do that one day. Dad says he thinks lots of people would like to see it.

Opal Lee

I’m just a little old lady in tennis shoes getting in everybody else’s business.

I WASN’T SURPRISED THE first time I heard about COVID -19. We’ve been through epidemics before. We’ve lost people and it’s been shameful. However, this has been worse than anything I’ve known. The worst. I’m 93 years old. I’ve lived through influenza, smallpox, polio—you name it. We came through. We worked together. Now, we’re not getting any help, no information. I am so disgusted. We’re not prepared. And people are thinking that it is just going to go away. Well, people as old as I am, we know that isn’t going to work. We have seen it before. I check on people, call them, keep my thumb on the pulse of the people. I tell great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, and all the others to take care of themselves. You have to exercise in your home. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. I counted out 350 steps in my house. That’s one lap. I put ten pebbles in my pocket and I take out one pebble for each lap until I’ve done ten. That’s one mile. You have to stay strong. Keep your immune system up. I get down on my arthritic knees to onish you—your family’s going to need you. We’re all needed. We’ve still got so much to do. Older people forget that we have all kinds of wisdom that we can on to the youngsters so they don’t have to make the same mistakes we made. Every little bit helps. It does. I know it does. I don’t know why people don’t step up and

help. We get complacent. We’re in our own box and we’re not willing to get outside the box and help anybody else. We have all kinds of excuses. I might get hurt talking to strangers. People won’t appreciate me getting into their business. Well, I tell them all the time, I’m just a little old lady in tennis shoes getting in everyone else’s business. I know people are scared of the virus. But if you have a God that you can hang on to, if you’ve got a faith, I don’t see why. I’ve had my religion to hold on to for so long. It’s not going to let me down now. I belong to the African Methodist Episcopal church. It’s a church that helps people. Our church is founded on the principle that we are our brother’s keeper. I try to live by that principle. At my age, I’m not wanting to sit back and wait for the Lord to come get me. In fact, He’s probably going to have to catch me because there’s still so much that needs to be done. One of the things we do is run a food bank and a farm right here in Fort Worth. The farm was started because people standing in line at our food bank said they were willing to farm. We were given the use of thirteen acres of land on the Trinity River. A real urban farm. We’re working to set up a program to get people working there who have been incarcerated and now can’t find jobs. They’ll be paid a living wage. Meanwhile, the farm is thriving with so many volunteers. COVID -19 hasn’t slowed us down at all. I still carry food boxes from the food bank, twice a month, to twenty families that are bedridden or wheelchair-bound, as well as grief boxes for families who have lost loved ones—whatever we have to give, we give. Another thing that hasn’t slowed down is my work to get Juneteeth declared as a national holiday. That’s my life-long ion. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863 but slaves in Galveston, Texas didn’t find out they were free until June 19, 1865, two-and-a-half years later. So freedom came; they took it however they could get it. People need to it to the past, just to say, “Hey, this happened a long time ago. I wasn’t a part of it but let’s work from here to make things better.” Until people acknowledge what has happened, it can’t be fixed.

In 2016, I did a symbolic walk from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, DC to garner attention for Juneteenth. We called it the Opal’s Walk 2 DC campaign. I was 89 years old and I walked two-and- a-half miles a day to symbolize the twoand-a-half years it took to get the news of freedom. We generally have these big, fabulous parades for Juneteenth, but we couldn’t have a parade this year because of the pandemic, so we had a caravan instead. I led it. People walked the twoand-a-half miles with me in Fort Worth. I thought we’d have fifteen, twenty cars follow me, but we had over 300 cars follow behind us. I walked—virus or not. We also have a petition drive that garnered 1.5 million signatures that we brought to Congress this year. One lone Senator, Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, withheld his vote so the national Juneteenth holiday legislation did not . I have wanted to have a conversation with him to ask him to tell me why but that hasn’t materialized yet so I made him a little video. I hope he was able to see it. Well, we’re going to get 1.5 million more signatures by this January and take the whole three million to DC again, COVID -19 or no COVID -19. We’re still trying to get the bill ed. We’re not giving up, not by a long shot.

I think I’m so ionate about Juneteenth because of what happened here in Fort Worth when I was twelve. My parents bought a house in what was called the South Side. We were the first black family on that street. My mom had the house fixed up so nice but on the nineteenth day of June, the people in the neighborhood gathered. The newspaper said that they were 500 strong and the police couldn’t control the crowd. However, when my dad got there with a gun, the police said to him, “If you bust a cap, we’ll let the mob have you.” My parents sent us to friends nearby while they stayed. They left later under the cover of darkness. The people tore the place up, set the house on fire, all those bad things. My parents never discussed it with us. We moved from place to place, my parents working hard, until we were able to buy another house. Nothing was done about the old house. No justice. I don’t know why those people felt like they did. Or rather, I do know why, but I’m still processing it. You know, black people didn’t come willingly to the United States. We were brought here. We were enslaved. There were so many things done to us. I don’t know whether what happened to our house on that day had anything to do with my work now, but our house was burned down on the nineteenth day of June. Subconsciously, maybe I felt like I needed to do something. A group of us started back in the mid-1970s and I’ve continued to this day making sure Fort Worth celebrates Juneteenth for over 45 years now. I’m trying real hard to slow down, wear the mask, and stay in, but there are so many things to do. With this pandemic, I don’t know what it’s going to take to make people aware. Folks are trying to help. Blacks and Latinos and healthcare workers are being hurt the worst. Nobody should care what color you are when you are sick and need help. So I do what I can. I’m so surprised and humbled to be called a hero. I just think there are so many others that have done so much more. I don’t feel like a hero. I just try to work hard every day. I get a bit frustrated because I want it all to happen sooner. I’ve been working on things for a long time.

Paul Wilkie

I wanted to be more than just a delivery driver.

I SWEAR PEOPLE ASK especially for me to deliver their prescriptions just to see Irma. She wins hearts. She’s my dog—a little Springer Spaniel—and she’s saved me. I don’t know where I’d be without her. For the last few months during the pandemic, she’s ridden with me on the back of my Africa Twin 1300cc motorbike as I’ve knocked on doors in the tiny villages around my home near Perth in Scotland. I’m an ex-soldier who was forced to retire early due to life- changing injuries and ptsd. It’s nice to help others; I need help myself sometimes and I know what it’s like to feel isolated and alone. When I came out of active service after 22 years all was going well until I was hit with nightmares, flashbacks, and depression. At one point after my marriage broke down, I was rescued from a forest. I’d been living in a tent for nine months, unable to face the world. For many people, the COVID -19 pandemic couldn’t have felt that different. Back in March, it was natural for me to want to get involved and fortunately my district council needed people to deliver medicines. I was ideal for it. I’m a shielded person myself, which meant I wasn’t mixing with others. In many ways I was a safe bet. And I enjoy riding around and chatting with the sick and the vulnerable—from a safe distance, of course. I particularly like the elderly. Some people I met hadn’t seen another human being for weeks and I like the banter, so

I stayed for half an hour to chat.

Not long after I started, one of the guys at the council rang me up. “Everybody’s asking for you and Irma. You’re doing the lion’s share of these deliveries. You deserve a medal!” he said. That made me laugh. “I’ve got enough medals,” I replied. I don’t think he had any idea of my military background and that I’m highly decorated. I won’t lie. Those years of service have taken their toll, but I wouldn’t change them for the world. People might find that strange. Thirty years ago if you spent 22 years in the army, your life expectancy would be around 55 years old. It’s a bit longer these days, but the stress is immense. I’ve been caught in a bomb blast. I’ve had a bullet ricochet off a wall and into my leg. I saw my friend get blown up in front of me like pink mist. I helped invade Iraq on a Harley Davidson with enemy fire ripping past my head. I looked like Steve McQueen, but ptsd affects me every day. I started with the Royal Engineers when I was eighteen. I was after a more exciting life, which I certainly got. I ended up becoming a nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare expert. I’ve served all over the world, but the bad places were Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I have nightmares about them all the time, but Irma knows and she sits on my chest and licks my face to wake me up. She’s a service dog, named after a World War II Alsatian who won the Dickin Medal for Bravery, which is the highest award an animal can receive. She knows all my moods and emotions and understands my every move. I was given her through a charity called Bravehound which trains dogs to help war veterans like me. When I have flashbacks I go into a daze and she immediately takes me out of it. The flashbacks can be awful for ex-soldiers, and anything can trigger them: a smell, a taste, or a noise. Some people take it really badly and can collapse and curl up into a ball. I know of one guy who can’t even walk down the meat aisle in the supermarket. It reminds him too much of dead bodies. I don’t have any formal qualifications to deal with ptsd but I’ve got a lot of experience, so I’m used to helping people. I offer that service over Twitter, and soldiers and police officers often call me up. It’s never a short-lived conversation. I help as many as three people a week but we’re often in touch for as long as eight months. ptsd sufferers are often suicidal and I can receive phone

calls at 3:00 a.m. I guess helping them helps me. I felt that during the pandemic, too. I wanted to be more than just a delivery driver. “I wish I could invite you in for a cup of tea,” some of the elderly people said to me. It struck a chord. It’s good to talk. Having grown up in and around Perth, I know how the place has changed. When I was young, you knew everyone and everybody looked out for one another. Now, the city has grown and there’s not that close sense of community that I . Shops are boarded up and people have moved away. Just taking the time to chat to people can mean a lot, especially during the crisis. As well as Irma, my friend Fiona does that for me, alongside my neighbour Alison who also checks in to see that I’m okay. Fiona lives eighteen miles away in Dundee. I classify her as a best friend and she’s a really caring person, although I don’t think she’s ever gotten used to my Army sense of humor! She has a front tooth missing at the moment, so I like to joke with her by calling her Nanny Mhee. I doubt she finds it funny. Fiona took Irma in to stay on occasions when I was in hospital for a long spell. I stayed in for over three years, eventually leaving on Christmas Eve of 2018. However, being a service dog, Irma was allowed to stay with me most of the time, and didn’t leave my bedside except when I was in ICU. PTSD can affect you physically as well as mentally and I ended up in Perth Royal Infirmary diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis. I had so many operations I lost count. When I was transferred to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee seven months later, I had my large bowel removed, but the operation didn’t go to plan and I ended up with Sepsis and fell into a coma after suffering lung failure. Unbeknown to me, my three children were told I had 36 hours to live.

The survivor in me must have kicked in because I woke up ten days later with seven tubes coming out of my stomach. Just like COVID -19 patients in ICU , I also had a tube inserted into my throat. It makes me laugh when I see hospital dramas on TV where patients lie in intensive care with the thinnest of tubes helping them breathe. It’s nothing like that. It feels more like having a car exhaust stuck in your windpipe. Many people underestimate how much ICU damages patients long term, and it’s no surprise that COVID -19 recoveries are long and slow. I have slight brain damage and memory loss as a result of the coma. Many years ago my newborn son Danny also suffered lung failure and died. Of all of my memories, that is probably the saddest. I was serving in Osnabruck in northwest at the time when my wife gave birth to him, but he fell ill soon after and was transferred to another hospital. I’ll never forget the priest arriving to give him the last rites. I couldn’t understand why he was there. “Your son’s dying,” he told me, and I knew then I had to fetch my wife. I scooped his tiny body out of the incubator and watched as she held him in her arms until he died half an hour later. That was so tough. Nothing prepares you for that kind of loss. Now, I like the peace and quiet of the cottage where I live. My village, called Guildtown, doesn’t even have a shop. Getting out on the bike this summer has been good for me, though it does take it out of me physically. It’s a powerful machine and its front wheel just wants to lift all the time. When I’m delivering I just plug in the postal code to the sat nav and take it easy.

I like watching soccer, too. Irma even has her own season ticket and sits beside me while I cheer on my local team St. Johnstone, though sadly that won’t happen this year. I could never do that before I had her, as the sudden cheers would set me off. Without Irma, I would not have been able to lend a hand during the pandemic. She’s a life changer. A couple of years ago she won the RSPCA award for Most Caring Animal in the United Kingdom. She’s been the best companion and it’s great that she’s also making a difference to the lives of isolated and vulnerable people, too.

Pauline Hughes

We had to minimize any fear for the sake of the residents. We had to show them that this was their home and they were going to be safe.

M Y FAMILY WOULD call me stubborn, but I’d say I’m determined. Nursing is all I’ve ever known. I’ve been in the profession since the age of seventeen, and I’m now 72. Of course, my sons and daughters begged me not to work across the peak of the pandemic. For a brief moment, I also considered hanging up my uniform, but one lady drew me back. I’ve been caring for residents at a care home for the last eighteen years, but on the day we had to stop relatives from visiting their loved ones, her words deeply affected me. I’ll never forget her daughters’ anguish at not being able to see their mother. Emotions were running high and so was their anger. They gave me cards to read out to her, and when I sat by her bedside, reciting the messages, I felt myself fill up with tears. “I’m never going to call you ‘nurse’ again,” she told me as I was leaving the room. “I’m going to call you Pauline, because you’re the only family I have now.” My decision was made there and then. And when I called to tell my children that I would continue to work, they conceded. “You’re right mom. You know what you can do.” In all honesty, I didn’t think too hard about the risks. I am healthy and I swim every morning but, given my age, I knew I had to take all the precautions I could. In fact, the worst thing about the start of the pandemic was the fear of the unknown. I listened to the scientists and the politicians but nothing could prepare

us. That said, much of my early nursing career was spent never knowing what would happen next, and managing challenging situations. I started nursing in April 1966, just at the outset of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. By 1969 I had my first hospital job in the A&E department of Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, County Armagh, around five miles from the border between north and south. Back then, it was a small emergency department with a onebedroom, and so when I began treating minor casualties spilling out from the Sunday night civil rights marches it was difficult to manage. Even though the demonstrations were mainly peaceful, we’d have to take in those hurt in minor scuffles. But it didn’t take long for the violence to escalate. One of my most vivid memories was dealing with the aftermath of a firebomb in a local shop when two young people were burned to death. Then, protests erupted when a twelve- year-old was shot dead by the army. I was running on adrenaline dealing with so many angry and wounded people. On another occasion, I was even shot at myself with rubber bullets. I had been driving through an area of unrest when I heard the noise of something ricocheting off the driver’s door. I kept looking forward and kept my foot on the accelerator until I reached the back door of the hospital, but when I got out and saw the damage to the door, I knew I had a lucky escape. Just like everybody else, I was thrown in at the deep end, and very much on my own. There just wasn’t the , or the trauma counselling, that medical staff are offered now. If you were feeling upset, you might take some of your anxiety home or talk to your matron or a nursing officer, but that was rare. Most of the time I had to harden up and survive. In many ways, it has made me the person I am today. I stayed working in A&E after my first child was born, but in 1976 when I had my third baby I had decided to leave the profession. I handed in my resignation, but instead of leaving, I was persuaded into a six-month secondment as a community nurse. There, a whole new set of challenges presented itself, and perhaps it was during this time that I became even more determined. One morning I was prevented from crossing a manned barricade by a soldier. Many people were diabetic on my rounds and I was on my way to deliver insulin to a sick lady. I turned back home, thought about what had just happened, and returned to the checkpoint, much to my husband’s distress. “If this was your

mother waiting on this injection, how would you feel?” I confronted the soldier. “You should let me through.” Some discussions were had and slowly, the barricade lifted and I was allowed on my way. But the barricades weren’t just physical. In such a time of political unrest and division, they were religious and personal. I was a Catholic, nursing patients in a Protestant community, and it could be nerve-wracking and upsetting. Some of the community accepted you, but others didn’t. In the aftermath of one dreadful atrocity where a lorry load of mill workers had been shot at and almost all of them killed, I was due to visit the home of one of the relatives of the deceased who was under my care. As I lifted my bag out of the car, three men approached me. “You’re not coming in.You are not welcome,” they said. Again, the welfare of my patient was at the forefront of my mind. I explained that if they were going to stop me, my patient would not be treated that day. Eventually, I was welcomed in by the patient’s husband, but the three men insisted on standing at the door and watching as I carried out my duties. “I was not there at the bombing. I am a nurse,” I told them, adding that if they’d rather I didn’t return they should say so. “No. You are most welcome here Nurse Hughes,” the husband told me. That was one of the most personally challenging moments for me.

Despite all those experiences, I’ve never changed my mind about the job. I even retired back in 2002 when it was clear my sick husband wasn’t going to recover, but a friend lured me into a care home job when she asked me to cover while she went to see her grandchildren. I started working at Glencarron Care Home parttime, and when my husband ed away thirteen years ago, I was glad to have my role there to occupy me. Even throughout the bad times, I suppose I’ve always had friends and family around me. All my siblings live nearby. So, one of the hardest things for me during this lockdown period has been the lack of I had with people. Not hugging or touching my daughter, grandchildren, and sisters has been unbearable. Three of my children now live in New York and I’d already had to cancel a trip to see my youngest grandchild, Noah, being born in April. I also had to miss my eldest grandchild’s graduation. My daughter Lisa, who is the only daughter I have living nearby, was the only person who could come and stand by the fence and talk to me. Without her I would have felt lost. Great team spirit lifted the care home, too. That was important. Thankfully we remained free of COVID -19, but I believe that was down to the good decisions made by the management early on, and the dedication of all the staff. We did our best to maintain a high level of care and we took every precaution we knew how. That’s not to say we weren’t scared, but we had to minimize any fear for the sake of the residents. We had to show them that this was their home and that they were going to be safe. Communicating through masks and protective gear was dreadful. Besides, many residents didn’t understand what was happening, and not being able to see their loved ones only added to their confusion. That was the worst for me—the sheer separation of people. Closing the home to visitors was one of the most difficult things. As much as vulnerable people need looking after by trained staff, they need their loved ones around them, too. It’s so important to their wellbeing.

I never thought I would end my nursing career in a pandemic. Of all the experiences I have had, this is very new. Nevertheless, it has not deterred me. We may yet see a second wave or even a third, but I will work for as long as I can. I have my three-year evaluation coming up in 2022 and I may consider retiring then. Then again, I may not. I’ve always loved delivering care to people. I’ve never felt I needed a different job.

Rajinder Singh

My daughter says I’m like a celebrity, but all I want is love, kindness, and a feeling of oneness.

H EALTH IS WEALTH . My Sikh religion has taught me that, but also my father, Makhan Singh. During World War II he was a British Army soldier in the Punjab—a role he was very proud of. Tragically, my father was strangled in 1985 in India while I was living in the United Kingdom. I discovered this dreadful news from a telegraph in the post. To this day I still don’t know who killed him, but I am doing all I can to give back to others and to make him proud. He was the man who taught me how to skip, and during the pandemic I hope I’ve inspired many others to pick up a set of ropes and do the same. Skipping goes back a long way for me. When I was a young boy, around six or seven years old, my dad used to take me out into the fields in our village, Devi Das Pura, which is near Amritsar in India. I’d sit and watch him cutting grass, and one day he said: “Son, get a rope.” “Where can I find one?” I asked, but he always kept string in his pocket, and so he reached down and unravelled it and taught me how to skip. At first, I could only do about three rounds, but he practiced with me every day. When I got to nine or ten he lifted me up and held me up in the air. He was so excited.

I’m used to hardship. When I was born in India in 1947 we had very little. A rope was the simplest thing we could own. But I also many people in our village dying of malaria, too. Then, when India went to war with Pakistan, we had no electricity. We couldn’t study in the dark and it was too hot to sit outside during the day. In many ways, the covid-19 pandemic felt like the beginning of something. It is God’s way of teaching us to take care of the world and each other. The Sikh community always works to help each other, but at the beginning of lockdown our temples, called Gurdwaras, closed. Many go there to pray and receive food. I wondered how people like me would manage. I have a wife and my daughter living with me, but others were isolated. I also went on a park run every Saturday, but the pandemic stopped that. I missed those things. When my daughter suggested that I skip to inspire people I agreed, but I did not expect the attention I got. When the videos she made of me skipping in my allotment went viral, I it that I felt a bit embarrassed. Even as a young boy in school, I was never a person who wanted to be in the limelight. I like to help people quietly. But, Minreet said to me: “Dad, in this crisis situation you can help others and inspire them. Our Guru Nanak travelled the world to spread his message and you can do the same.” It gave me the enthusiasm to carry on. I don’t know how many skips I’ve done—thousands if not millions. I started skipping in the first week of lockdown and I’m still doing it now, and I try to show that I am never tired. They call me The Skipping Sikh, but what’s been amazing is that what started as a fun community project has touched many people worldwide. Ropes started to be sold-out in shops, too, and when my own rope broke, people kindly started donating to me. That broken rope had its own history and held such special memories for me. It was given to me 47 years ago by a man called Les Simmons. He was a retired soldier, and when I was working at Heathrow as a driver, he gifted it to me as a thank you for helping out. I couldn’t believe it when I saw this lovely leather rope, which would have been expensive in those days. “Have this, son,” he said, and I felt so proud he’d called me son. I promised that I’d keep the rope until the day I died and every time I brought it out it would remind me of him.

Unfortunately, it broke early on in my skipping challenge, and even though I tried to fix it with nails, I couldn’t continue, but the kindness of others shone through. People posted me ropes and some even had the The Skipping Sikh logo on it. We made T-shirts, too, and so far we’ve raised just over £13,914 for the National Health Service ( NHS ), and counting! I felt an affinity with those working on the front lines. Until I retired, I was a bus driver, and I’ve worked as a shuttle bus driver and on public transport. People think dealing with the public is a cushy job but it isn’t. Sometimes the public treated us badly. I one drunk couple we were trying to help. The husband spat on us. Days later, his wife wrote to our managers to apologize, and later so did he. Many people don’t. When I think about the police and fire service, drivers, and all the frontline NHS staff, I understand how difficult their job is.

I feel the world is not the same place as it was when I first arrived in the United Kingdom in the early seventies. Before I left India, my father told me that I could be anything I wanted to be in the United Kingdom, and that it was a place of opportunity. He was right. But, over the last few months I’ve seen so many people ignoring government advice, and perhaps some of the trust and generosity for other people has gone. I wish those days would come back. My religion teaches me Seva, which is the act of selfless service. Now, being able to follow what my religion tells me has made me very happy. The best thing is that most of my many viewers around the world are not Sikh and many of them are very young. As well as forging a relationship with them, I hope that this has highlighted that the world is not a racist, intolerant place. There are a lot of good people out there and I want people to see someone of my ethnic origin making a difference. It’s a more positive story than many I hear on the news. My daughter says I’m like a celebrity, but all I want is love, kindness, and a feeling of oneness. The other message I wanted to convey is that whatever age you are, it’s important to stay active. The NHS is already stretched thin and we can all do our bit to look after ourselves. It doesn’t take much to eat well and exercise. I try to stay away from bad habits and don’t rely too much on medicine. And, if I go a day without skipping, running, cycling, or walking my head gets fuzzy or I feel there is something missing. Even if I exercise for half an hour, it relaxes me. Now, I’ve been approached by an organization called The Skipping Workshop to go into schools and teach young children how to skip. I’ve also been approached by the charity, Age United Kingdom, to be featured in a national campaign. I raised money for them recently when a local garden center welcomed me in and gave me the space to skip. In fact, the garden center opened its doors when others tried to shut theirs. Not long after I started skipping in my allotment, the council rang me to say there had been a complaint. Apparently people had been concerned about health and safety, even though I was outside bothering no one. They told me I needed to

wait ten days to get permission. At the time, my story was spreading and the media wanted to report on it. I didn’t feel giving back to my community could wait and that’s when the garden center stepped in. There will always be obstacles in life, but the lesson I took from it was that not everyone is going to come together, but when one door closes, another one opens. My wife and my daughter have also been busy baking cakes decorated in hennapatterned icing since the beginning of June. In fact, none of us have been bored during lockdown. I am a spiritual man and my days start with early prayer. I am always busy and exercise is a key part of my day. In the Sikh scripture faith and health go hand-in-hand. Energy from prayer is our lifeblood. It’s funny. I hardly look at the videos of me online, but when I do, it feels as if this is someone else doing all of this. “Who is this mad man?” I ask. I’m 74 in October and I could not have predicted that my life would change in this way. Often, I have a vision in my mind of my father touching his turban. “Son. Respect my turban,” he always said. What he meant was, “Everything that is in my head, I to you. Don’t let me down.” I wish he was here now to have seen his son, the Skipping Sikh.

Randhir Singh Sohel

He wasn’t a celebrity on TV, and he didn’t save lives, but he did know how important it was to make desperate people feel secure.

In loving memory of our hero Randhir: as told by his sisters Gulsharn and Jas Sohel

Gulsharn: Randhir’s job could not have been easy. Starting in the housing department, he worked at Leeds City Council for 33 years, eventually progressing to the benefits department. He took pride in his ability to help people who were often upset and in personal crises. When people started losing their jobs and income as a result of the pandemic, or had been forced into poorly paid contracts (some being in need of food banks), he spoke calmly and professionally to them. He wasn’t a celebrity on television, and he didn’t save lives, but he knew how important it was to make desperate people feel secure.

Jas: Randhir’s own background gave him that desire to help others and the empathy to connect with people who felt completely alone. When Randhir was six, he was in a road accident which left him in a coma for six weeks and needing hospital treatment for many years. I was with him the moment he regained consciousness. I accompanying him on appointments for physiotherapy and other treatments for months afterwards. With his brain injury and physical disabilities, he had to relearn everything from eating and drinking to walking and talking. These experiences made him understand how it feels to be isolated, helpless, and unable to communicate. As time ed, he was

perceived as a disabled person; he learnt the harsh reality of being excluded from groups and activities.

Gulsharn: In many ways, with the accident, Randhir lost his childhood. When we were all running around he sat in his wheelchair and watched from the sidelines. His injuries shaped who he became and I don’t think many people knew what he had to overcome every day. Because he was hit on the right side of his head, his left side was very weak. It even affected his hearing and the growth of his limbs. He walked with a limp and struggled with his memory and concentration.

Jas: Randhir attended a special school for many years and finally reed mainstream school as a teenager. This was in the 1980s. While the Sikh community (which we belong to) provided sympathy and to our family, the outside world stigmatized Randhir’s disability. He was perceived as being weak even though he was a very determined person. It upset him that the term disabled referred to him, affecting his personality and making him reserved and shy, but he never wanted pity or special treatment which might draw attention to his limitations.

Gulsharn: The lovely thing was that Randhir made lasting friends until the day he died. Many were from his early days at school. They were honest people who cared about him. Even when they moved away, they always visited him. And, of course, he had his family. He was the youngest of six children and all his five elder sisters cared and worried about him.

Jas: Our mother was overprotective of Randhir. She feared he would stumble and fall and be further injured. She always let him off the hook from doing household chores even though we insisted he help out to encourage him to become independent on all levels. Another factor was that our father, Dalip, a founding member of the Leeds community, suddenly died. We the many people dad helped in the Sikh community, providing advice or translation. Our house often looked like a waiting room when we came home from school. In 1977, Randhir, Dad, and I

were invited to take part in an educational film which highlighted the Sikh faith and how Sikhs were adapting to life in the United Kingdom. In this film, Dad talks about the power of prayer and how it helped him when Randhir was critically ill. This unexpected loss of our Dad affected us all deeply but was devastating to Randhir. He lost his ive father and a role model at such a critical age which added to his feelings of being isolated and insecure.

Gulsharn: Randhir was proud to have continued my father’s legacy through his work. His work colleagues told us how much they miss him. He was always cheerful and never said a bad word about anybody. They voted him for the ‘Colleague of the Year’ award for two years running for being one of the best team . People knew that if they ever had a problem, Randhir would stay with them until it was sorted. He never saw that as going above and beyond.

At the start of the pandemic, one woman he helped told him, “When this is over I want you to come to my house and meet my children and grandchildren.” He burst into tears. “She doesn’t even know me,” he said. It clearly meant so much to him.

Jas: At the beginning of lockdown, I was increasingly concerned about Randhir and his wife. I was ringing them regularly to ensure they were taking protective measures in daily activities. We all felt relieved when he could work from home. It was then we saw first-hand how calm and patient he was at dealing with people in distress. As the situation worsened, he volunteered for extra weekend work to manage the backlog of benefit claimants. Despite the lockdown restrictions, Randhir was cheerful and optimistic, staying in touch with colleagues and family. One evening, a month into lockdown, he did not make our virtual get-together. He said he thought he had a cold or a flu and was going to bed. By morning, his fever had gone but he still was not feeling well. “I’ll speak to you when you get up,” I told him, but within the hour he had a massive heart attack and died. We found out later that this was unrelated to covid-19.

Gulsharn: On our sad days we think about Randhir’s face, his laughter, his smile, and everything that was endearing about him. He had his moments— Randhir was no saint—but we loved him. During the pandemic, we were allowed to see him in the chapel of rest but it was restricted to two people at a time. All the ive things we needed as a family such as crying, hugging, and ing together, we couldn’t do. We had to grieve separately in our homes. It was horrible.

Jas: When organizing the funeral we were advised by the Gurdwara elders not to tell people the date and time. Due to my father’s reputation, Randhir was wellknown in the community and they were worried that mourners would turn up anyway to pay their respects. A limited number of close family attended, with

only six people allowed in the Gurdwara for prayers afterwards. We want to be a voice for Randhir and tell his story for him. We want to thank all people who work in councils’ services who help people from the heart because they believe they make a difference. Randhir was our hero.

Robertino Rodriguez

I just felt so bad because they’re so scared already, and then I come in, and they can’t see my face. It’s scary, someone without a face.

A RESPIRATORY therapist deals with patients with lung and heart problems, so when a patient gets put on a ventilator, that’s us— the respiratory therapists—the ones who manage the ventilator. Because COVID -19 is a lung virus, we were busy nonstop. Every patient coming in had lung issues. When things started in the beginning, it was so scary. We were overwhelmed. Our hospital was getting a lot of transfers because the smaller hospitals around us couldn’t handle the surge. It just didn’t stop. Normally we’re busy, especially in flu season, but this was ten times worse because the patients weren’t getting better. Nobody, no matter what we did. And we were wondering what we were doing wrong. We were getting frustrated because we were doing everything we could think of to get them to recover and they weren’t recovering. We had never experienced anything like this. We had to change all our protocols, try anything we could think of to see what worked and what didn’t work. Everything was out the window. One thing they figured out was to put patients on their stomachs. You’re lying on your back in the hospital bed but putting someone on their stomach seemed to work really well. Something so simple, and yet, it really changed everything. In a way, it was like what happened with the Share Your Smile movement. It was such a simple

idea, so small, but it still affected so much. The idea started one day on a long shift. I was wearing my full ppe: the white suit, N95 mask, eye shield, and then another visor over all of that. There was no part of me that you could see. I looked like an astronaut. I was taking care of my patients this way and I felt so bad because they were already scared. Then I came in and they couldn’t see my face. It was scary, someone without a face. At that time, patients weren’t allowed to see family , so they were already alone. I felt so bad for the whole twelve-hour shift that I worked that day. After I went home, I thought about it that whole night, how bad I felt. That was when I ed that we had a laminator in our break room. I thought, I’ll print a photo of myself, laminate it, and put it on my chest. I’ll make it big so they can see it. That night, I emailed one of my photos to my work email. When I got into work, I printed it, laminated it, cut it out, and put it on. I thought, Oh, this is great. Let me just take a photo of myself, wearing it. It was just for my friends and family who follow me on Instagram, nothing big. I think maybe I had about 400 or 500 followers and I didn’t think much about it again. But right away I saw the reactions of my patients that day, how happy they were that they were seeing my face. A lot of them would laugh when I first walked in. It brought joy to my patients. My colleagues loved it, too. Some of them asked me to make tags for them. In the end, I must have done it for at least 70 people. That night, I went home exhausted, and the next day, I woke up to a text message from a friend who had seen my picture on someone else’s Instagram. My post had been reposted! I thought that was pretty cool, so I opened my Instagram, and it was already blowing up. My photo had been shared all over and it just kept growing and growing, going viral. I had news media companies ing me asking for interviews. The next thing I knew, I was on television. Even Good Morning America asked if they could share my photo. Positive messages from people around the world were flowing in and healthcare workers were asking me, how did you do it? I want to do it, too. So, other healthcare workers started doing it. Patients and their family wrote to tell me how they had been scared and how seeing the photos made them more at ease knowing that healthcare workers were not only taking care of COVID

-19 but also thinking about their mental health and their hearts. Doctors, nurses, and hospital staff started sending me pictures of their smiling faces on their PPE from Egypt, Morocco, Japan—all over. One of the British royal family shared my picture. Actress, Kristen Bell, even shared it. Governor Gavin Newsom of California and New York congresswoman, Alexandria OcasioCortez, shared it. Respiratory therapists around the country were writing to me, saying thank you so much, because now people were mentioning respiratory therapists, our profession, and it made them proud. The Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy even made me a saint for a day. Having all of those positive messages at such a dark time, when everything was so negative, felt like something positive was finally coming out of COVID -19. It was just so dark and my small act of kindness was like one little star. But every act of kindness makes lots of stars, which end up bringing brightness into the dark, dark world. All of these little acts of kindness add up. All the little things you do that you think are so small, are really you bringing so much light.

One small thing now that everyone can do is to wear a mask. That’s all. Just wear your mask. It’s very simple, like what I did with my photo. We’re not asking you to do anything more than that. It will make a huge difference because that one small act of kindness really affects the world. When Dr. Seuss’s estate ed me, I knew I had really become famous. To me, that was a big one. They asked me to be a part of a commencement ceremony for the 2020 class and I felt like I had a message for kids: Do not give up on your dream, even if it takes a long time. As long as you don’t stop and keep going, you’re going to get there. I know from experience because I grew up poor. I had to do everything on my own. I had to pay for college on my own, to live on my own. My mom was a single mother who worked hard to three kids living in low income, Section 8 apartments. Still, my mom always taught us to help everybody. Even when you’re in need, you can still help someone who is more in need. We always participated in food drives or clothing drives for the homeless or for different things. She instilled in us the idea of always helping others—that’s what led me to medicine. But it took me until I was 30 to finish college and get my career going. There were times I had to drop out because I couldn’t pay for school and had to pay rent, car payments, gas, food. For two years, I was a Certified Nursing Assistant and I was in respiratory therapy school. I was working three days a week in the hospital—twelve-hour shifts—and then going four days a week to respiratory school. No days off. I was eating from the dollar menu at McDonalds, trying to stretch my paycheck. Those were tough years with barely enough money to cover basic expenses and no money for anything extra. I was living dirt poor. But I did it. And that was my message to those kids listening to the Dr. Seuss commencement. Now, for six years, I’ve had a career I love taking care of patients. We were on the front lines of COVID -19 (not just me but every other healthcare worker who was still going to work every day, getting out of bed and going there, into the unknown). We were able to make a difference in the world. By doing our jobs, day in and day out, we

were being heroes, and I was one of those heroes. Then I just happened to be the one who became famous because of something small I had done. My small act of kindness made patients feel at ease, happy, and comfortable being in such a scary place, and that spread across the world. Becoming famous was nice and everything, but eventually, all that goes back down and I’ll just be me again. But I’ll keep sharing my smile, one day without a mask, to help my patients. I hope one day when I do have children of my own, they’ll say, “Wow, my dad did something kind for the world, and that’s basically it.” Until then, I’m still wearing my picture, still spreading that message. I’m hoping that more people will see the Share Your Smile message and they’ll know that every small act of kindness can really affect the whole world.

Soumya Krishnakumar

I figured letter writing was the best I could do. And if it was the best I could do, then I ought to do it.

T HERE’S ONE DAY I very clearly: I was around six years old and I was in Southern India visiting my parents’ home near Chennai. We were heading out to a restaurant when a homeless woman stopped me just as I was getting out of the taxi. “Child. I’m hungry,” she grabbed my arm and begged me in Tamil. At that young age I didn’t understand very much but it was the first time I realized that the world is not fair and that I am very lucky. When the COVID -19 pandemic hit, that same feeling came over me. A year previously, I had already made a start in building a social enterprise, called The Crisis Project, which focused on educating people about injustice worldwide. Suddenly, there was a crisis right in front of me. Key workers were putting in triple the amount of hours to help others and hold the country together while many of us stayed at home. I sensed unfairness in that, and I began asking how I could appreciate their efforts, which is when I came up with the idea of Letters for the NHS and Letters to Care Homes.

The idea is really simple. Whereas the weekly Clap for Carers, which encouraged the public to get out on their doorsteps to clap for workers, was amazing and brought communities together, I didn’t feel it was enough. I wanted each worker to be seen as an individual and so I enrolled volunteers to write letters of to frontline staff who had been nominated by a friend, family member, or a colleague. This allowed the volunteers to craft a personal, bespoke letter, armed with specific information about that person which had been supplied in the nomination. If I’m honest, I hadn’t been entirely sure where to start. I had never done anything like this before but I had to start somewhere. So, on the first day of lockdown, I called up every NHS trust in the United Kingdom to tell them about the project and get the message out to staff. Then, I began piggy-backing off of Facebook advertising posts created by a network of Mutual Aid groups set up in communities already responding to the pandemic. I had known about the Mutual Aid groups because, from the moment I was sent home in March from Warwick University where I am studying, I started volunteering for my local group in Redbridge. In fact, that experience also spurred me into action. Not only had I been glued to news reports of workers enduring so much in difficult circumstances and without adequate protective equipment, but during my shifts I was also picking up phone calls from parents who couldn’t feed their kids or from people who had lost their jobs and didn’t know who to turn to. Redbridge Mutual Aid Group was helping the community by shopping for vulnerable people, delivering crisis food packages and picking up prescriptions for those who were shielding. We answered the calls and then connected the errand through a WhatsApp network to other volunteers who were well-placed to respond quickly. Suddenly, it felt like we were doing this positive thing in the community, but I wanted that same positivity to be injected into the lives of those on the frontline. Because I’m a nineteen-year-old student, I didn’t have the transportation or resources to do something transformational like feeding people or changing

people’s lives in a big way, but I figured letter writing was the best thing I could do. And if it was the best I could do, then I ought to do it.

At first, I didn’t reckon it was a big deal. It wasn’t until key workers started telling me how receiving a letter thanking them for their work had kept their spirits up and changed their day that the impact started to hit home. I’ll never forget one worker describing opening up her surprise envelope and reading her message as a “light in the darkness.” Another told me how distressing work had been for her and how she’d framed her handwritten letter and hung it on her wall. Soon, I realized I needed that to keep the project going—it made me feel that I had done something good and I was fulfilling what I’d set out to do. The amazing thing was that in those first few weeks I managed to enroll around 600 volunteer letter writers from a laptop in my bedroom, which grew at the height of the pandemic to around 1,000. Our youngest writers were six years old and they mainly drew pictures of rainbows, sunshine, and hearts alongside simple messages of thanks. Sometimes they received messages back so we had the elderly talking to the youngest of the community. Our oldest writers were in their nineties with so much diversity and life experience behind them. Some of the most touching letters came from people who had lost a loved one to COVID -19 or had themselves been treated or saved by a key worker. Those letters were just so fresh and raw and at the same time heartwarming. The project seemed to help both the writers and those receiving the letters—it became mutually beneficial.

Initially, all of the letters were handwritten. Because of data privacy laws in the United Kingdom, the words had to be transcribed by me onto paper before being sent on. But as the project grew, I was spending five hours a day copying out each and every message. At one point, I even enrolled my parents, and we spent days at the kitchen table working on them. When the volume became unsustainable, I allowed both emails and letters. I don’t think my parents were prepared for how the project took off, especially since I had casually announced I was doing it over breakfast one morning. Thinking about it now, ploughing my time into something positive became my own coping mechanism. At the start of lockdown, everything seemed so uncertain, but I knew my twelve-hour days would be filled with gathering volunteers, promoting the project, and sending letters. It wasn’t until week two, after I had ed a bunch of journalists, that my parents understood just how serious I had been. Suddenly, a film crew turned up on our doorstep wanting to make a documentary. Then, at the start of April, itv arrived and my mom and dad watched on, shocked, as journalists gathered in our front yard. One journalist I ed apologized that, while he couldn’t feature the story, he would sponsor the project’s online domain name. We even raised the money for postage through a crowd-funding mechanism on the website. I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped out in whatever way. After twelve weeks, I realized that I couldn’t do everything on my own: the marketing, the social media, and approaching partner schools and charities. Instead, I sent out a recruitment ad on Instagram asking for two full-time volunteers. I assumed it might be a difficult ask but immediately I had 30 responses. That was amazing! It alleviated the pressure but also meant the project could further grow. To date, we have sent out 750 letters, and not just to key workers, but to elderly people stuck in care homes unable to see or have with friends and family. Perhaps I was naive—lots of people do incredible things that don’t always take off—but I never saw it stopping until it had reached that level. Now, normal life resumes and I have to return to my college and embark on the second year of my mathematics degree. It seems like a good time. As the peak of

the pandemic has tapered off, so has the amount of letters that need to be written, and this is what I had envisaged from the start. We successfully responded to a need at a moment in time. Although I am planning on going into finance as a career, I would like to combine this and the skills I’ve learned as an activist in the charitable sector in the future. In the meantime, I see The Crisis Project as a platform for responding to any given need, whether it is a local or international crisis. Its ethos is about being “ionate about comion,” and so it may even be an umbrella project for smaller community projects, or an educational platform. I am still thinking about where I can take it. In times of crisis, I realized that a lot of people want to help, but don’t always know how. Being able to do something as simple as write a letter to someone is an incredibly positive and rewarding contribution.

Tom Bagamane, The Giving Spirit

Our goal was to serve 10,000 homeless people in 60 days. We did it in 49.

O UR ORGANISATION , The Giving Spirit, serves the homeless of Greater Los Angeles. We deploy thousands of people to help thousands of people. We’re public-facing and we’re community-based and focused. We’re about gathering. We’re about teaching large groups. And we’re also about one-on-one in the streets. So, when COVID -19 hit in early March, everything we did was suddenly a no-go. We closed our offices and sent everybody home to work remotely. We wondered if we were going to have to sit out the year, or as long as it took to get the virus under control, before our model was safe to execute again. Our work is based on two integrated core missions that we now couldn’t accomplish. Our first mission is to provide direct survival assistance to the poorest of the poor who live on our streets, to serve them where they live or stand. We bring aid directly to them in the form of survival kits that we build and hand out, kits filled with up to 75 or so essentials: nutrition, hydration, hygiene, first aid, clothing, Friendship Cards, and so on. Our base of 20,000 amazing volunteers and our dedicated staff help us obtain the materials, pack the kits, and distribute them in two huge semi-annual public events and a few smaller, sponsored events. These events allow us to expand our specialized offerings like our Companion Animal Kits Program, which helps the homeless provide for

their animals, who truly are indispensable to them. The second part of our mission is as important as our survival assistance: producing accessible and compelling education and awareness programming. We want to pierce the veil of homelessness, to allow people like you and me to understand the truths behind poverty and why people end up on the streets. There are so many misconceptions, stereotypes and fears, and so much ignorance around why people end up where they do. So many people believe it’s self-inflicted. There is a percentage of folks who do make that choice but a lot of them don’t. A majority of them want to be where you and I are, safe and warm sitting under a firm roof with a lock on the door, a refrigerator to store food, and walls to keep their families safe. However, when COVID -19 hit, when we were needed most, we couldn’t accomplish any of that. As the “first mile” in the spectrum of homeless care and services, it was a frustrating challenge. If we can care for and engage with them with comion, efficiency, true grace, and true impact right where they live, we can help them begin their journey to get off the street. Creating learning opportunities with them and our volunteers is a catalyst for the greater community to rethink and to think outside of themselves. To show everyone—homeless and volunteers—that if they really want to be a part of the solution, the solution is out there. But when the pandemic hit, we couldn’t help anyone take those first steps. I’m a solutions guy, though. It’s hard for me to sit on my hands. I went to my operations director, my right-hand man who has been with me for fifteen years, Tim Ingram. He’s the backbone of The Giving Spirit. I said, “Tim, I have an idea. Tell me if I’m crazy, but we have to make a difference right now. We have to do more with less. Can we re-engineer our model to safely get PPE and essentials out on the street—right now?” He told me that yes, I was crazy. And then he said, “How many lives do you want to serve?” Every number that we heard in of

COVID -19 was huge and they were all bad: thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. We had to do something that really caught people’s hearts so they’d know that if they donated—if they ed, if they ed us and shared our story—the impact would be huge, historic and memorable. I said, “Let’s try 10,000,” and then held my breath and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes, Tim was still there (thank God) so we set our sights high. We called it the 10,000 Lives Project. Our goal was to procure, assemble, and deliver 10,000 Health and Safety kits to Los Angeles’ homeless in 60 days in the middle of a pandemic. We reached out and angels answered. Our local councilman, Mike Bonin, gave us the use of the Westchester Civic Center. We never had a 24/7 facility before. We took that building and created a CDC -compliant safe zone. We couldn’t draw from our traditional base of volunteers due to COVID -19. However, thanks to our partnership with Chrysalis, an organization that teaches job skills and provides job placement to the formerly homeless and formerly incarcerated, we powered our build and assembly with their staff. They had the perfect job skills and it allowed us to employ and work alongside the formerly homeless to serve the currently homeless, which gave them great pride. With their established work proficiency, we could efficiently assemble in a safe, controlled environment. We committed to creating and building a special COVID -19 Health and Safety Kit. Unfortunately, the same lack of PPE

that was challenging the “sheltered” made it very difficult to secure the crucial PPE for our people. Again, the angels came down from the sky. I happened to call one of our long-time donors, Chris Kelley, the CEO of a promotional clothing and uniform company, Image Solutions, to see how he was doing during the pandemic. He told me that his company had pivoted to making masks. I said, “Chris, can we get 10,000?” He said yes and gave us a great price. It was that, honestly, that launched us because if we couldn’t put masks in the kit, it would fall short of serving its purpose for health and safety. After that, we found a sponsor to donate toilet paper. I mean, nobody could buy toilet paper at that point, and we received thousands of rolls. We had companies donate hand sanitizer or give it to us at a great price when the market was going crazy for it. It was a lot of people coming together, our traditional vendors and donors, and new ones. That was the assembly part. But how would we get folks into the streets to hand the kits out? Thankfully, over the years we’ve developed partnerships with nonprofit and city agencies all over Los Angeles. We worked with them to come and pick the kits up and deliver them directly to their constituents. The YMCA and the United Way became our partners for the first time to get these kits directly into the hands of those who needed them. It was melancholy in one way because the true magic of our work is sending thousands of our volunteers out into the streets to embrace our people one-on-one where they live, where they stand. That’s where learning happens. It’s hard to describe the realization that comes when you talk and get to know the people we serve. Even after doing this for twenty years, I learn every time I go out. It’s hard to

explain to someone the impact of learning the truth behind these formally invisible lives unless they us on the streets. But this was impossible due to the virus. However, our partners were overwhelmed and they needed help immediately. Collectively, we delivered. Their constituents were over the moon! We gave them PPE when no one could get PPE . During this time, we ran a parallel project, the 10,000-Card Challenge. In every one of our kits, we put a Friendship Card that was handmade by children and families. We partnered with the YMCA and other organizations to put receptacles all over the city where anyone could drop cards. The cards were poignant, touching, and beautiful. People badly wanted to do something for those on the streets but they couldn’t leave their houses. This project gave them the opportunity to brighten the day of someone out there who had lost hope—and giving them hope is as important as anything we do, as most have given up as they truly believe they’ve been discarded. Our goal was to serve 10,000 homeless people in 60 days. We did it in 49 days. Eleven days to spare. That’s a total credit to our amazing team, the City of Los Angeles, and our donors and partner organizations. But it’s also a credit to the real heroes: the people we serve. What we did was nothing compared to what they do every day—survive. They deal with crises that we all deal with all the time: loss of jobs, loss of a spouse, loss of a child, loss of a home, substance addiction, spousal abuse, emotional abuse. But we have the means and the resources to navigate these situations. They have lost that network. Something broke along the way, and in a moment of crisis when they really needed someone or something to prop them up or to stop them from falling, they didn’t have the people or institutions to prevent them from slipping through the cracks.

But that doesn’t mean that their lives are less important than ours. And we want to recognize them for their lives because at the end of the day, acknowledgment is what every human being wants. These people need and just want to be understood, acknowledged. And trust me, when you can give them the mutual respect they deserve, they begin to open up and the barriers begin to fall. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the folks we serve as the real heroes. They are so resilient. They’ve taken the worst of what life can give them and they decided not to pack it in. They’re going to do whatever they can to make it day after day. Homeless children who’ve never missed a day of school who end up at UCLA . Moms and dads who get up every day, work three jobs, and live with their children in their cars. How strong do you have to be to do that? To fight PTSD as a former veteran on the street, to fight memories of spousal abuse or mental illness? To live through a pandemic without a home? This is the resilience that these heroes have. And so, we serve the heroes. It’s our honor and privilege.

Victoria Hill

I even got told off by the doctors for working. The dedication of our crafters and ers was overwhelming.

I N FEBRUARY, I HAD A gut feeling that I wouldn’t work this year. As COVID -19 headed towards us, I debated whether to place orders or book my usual trade events. I’m a former fashion stylist turned collection buyer. I used to work in London, mainly in the music industry with big British names like MC Harvey and bands like Blue, but when I had my daughter, Emily, and moved to Worthing, I changed careers. I set up an online children’s fashion store called Little Stylish Me. The summer months are a crucial time for my business with 80 percent of my orders coming from trade fairs. But this year was different. Emily and I were both at home. What could we do? It didn’t feel ethical to cash in on a crisis by continuing to plug my business, so I decided to teach Emily a new skill and help people at the same time— anything but sitting around, getting stressed. I’d done my degree in knitting and my knitting machine had been gathering dust. If I’m honest, I was a bit nervous. I hadn’t made anything for quite a while but I put my fear to one side and got it out. Online, I’d seen crafters making masks, ear savers, and headbands for key workers in the NHS

. They were simple enough to teach Emily and so we started experimenting.

I’d already set up a WhatsApp group for our neighborhood, to be a point of and check if everyone was okay, and once Emily and I had made our first prototype ear saver, I casually posted to see if anyone wanted one. One woman who worked for the NHS knew how they helped alleviate the discomfort of having to wear a mask every day, so she put in a small order. The ear savers are made with a knitted band and two buttons. Soon another neighbor started to source and sew on the buttons.

As demand grew further, I set up Crafting for COVID , a Facebook group for crafters who had some spare time and wanted to help. My initial expectation was that there would be around twenty local ladies who would , but in just the space of a few weeks, we grew to a 760-strong crafting community. There were I had never met from where we live but we also had crafters from Ireland and Oxfordshire. Soon one of our neighbors, Sarah, started taking over the istration, and others started fundraising and gathering donations. The ear savers and headbands had little knitted hearts added on, then felt hearts, scrub bags, and knitted teddy bears. People were knitting, sewing, washing, collecting, and delivering items as the orders from hospitals and care homes flooded in. The items were lovely but we felt that they needed a personal touch. After all, key workers were enduring long shifts. We were also sending out hearts to COVID -19 patients and their families as a symbol of hope. When we teamed up with the Yellow Heart campaign, who honored loved ones who had been lost to COVID -19, it seemed even more appropriate to craft a personal message. So, Emily designed Crafting for COVID’S logo and wording. I’m still amazed at her dedication! At age six, she has the concentration of a flea at the best of times, but she sat for two hours writing and rewriting her words so they were perfect. Many of the items were sent out with the message, “Thank you for all that you do. We wanted to make you this as a token of our appreciation.” In the family hearts she wrote, “We wanted to send you this heart to let you know that we are thinking about you and sending love.” For those families who had sadly lost

someone, her words still bring a lump to my throat, “We are sorry for your loss. You are in our thoughts. We wanted to send you a heart. We are thinking of you.” I hope when she’s older she will look back with pride at all the artwork she designed with such love, care, and attention. While it was lovely to see Emily and lots of other children get involved (and for them to watch this small idea grow), there were many challenges to overcome. All the scrub bags had to be washed at 60 degrees and sealed before being sent off. One woman, Sue, must have spent hours doing this. Project managing so many women is difficult, and when I got ill myself with stomach pains and had to be itted to hospital for five days, I was even told off by the doctors for working. I couldn’t stop plugging away on my phone—there was so much to do! We were all volunteers but it was like we were running a proper business. The dedication of our crafters and ers was overwhelming. Other volunteers had personal obstacles to overcome. One woman, who suffers from agoraphobia, put herself forward as a delivery driver just to force herself to leave the house every day. Another woman, Charlotte, has sons with Asperger’s syndrome, but they continuously filled bags, stuffed hearts, and placed labels in gifts as if they were on a production line. It alleviated the stress of lockdown and, for many of us, helped take our minds off our issues. As I woke most mornings at 4:45 a.m., we had early shifts and late shifts. It ran like clockwork as the orders came in thick and fast. When we stopped in August, we all felt this terrible void, but it’s amazing what the group achieved in such a short space of time. There were so many kind gestures and special bonds that made Crafting for COVID worth every moment.

Vikram and Mrinal Seth, Bounce Bhangra

Two days before my wedding was supposed to take place, I was livestreaming a quarantine cardio class to Bhangra music.

Duo of dancing brothers

V IKRAM: O N RETURN from work in Paris in February, I got very sick. I had all the flu-like symptoms of COVID -19 but without the breathing difficulties. I was due to get married in Delhi two weeks later but by this time I had already been forced to cancel my stag do. Then, just days before the ceremony, India banned all incoming travel, leaving my wife stuck in Delhi, where she is based, and me recovering in North London. Two days before my wedding was supposed to take place, I was live-streaming a quarantine cardio class to Bhangra music.

Mrinal: Bhangra is in our blood. We’ve been dancing to it since we were kids. As teenagers, our summer holiday weekends had been filled with

dancing for eight hours each day in preparation for an annual Diwali festival. Bhangra is a traditional north Indian folk dance and originally performed by men to celebrate the harvest. It’s a social form of dance that brings the community together. Over the years, it has been merged with Western music styles, including Garage and Hip Hop. We saw how Bhangra was evolving from its roots and we wanted to take this further, making it more inclusive to attract a wider audience.

Vikram: These ideas took time to develop. During college, we took part in several dance shows. However, after leaving college, we realized there was little chance to enjoy Bhangra outside of professional dance competitions and the occasional wedding celebration. So, in 2016, we started our own Bhangra dance classes with a focus on uplifting people through a fun and high-energy workout.

Mrinal: The classes have grown over time. Before lockdown we were teaching two evenings a week in a dance studio in Central London, as well as doing choreography workshops in local community centers on the weekends. But as the pandemic reached its peak, the dance studio closed and so did the community centers. We discussed trying out a livestreaming session from our living room, just to see how it would go, but halfway through that session Vik got carried away. He casually announced, “We’re going to do this every day until the end of lockdown!” Every day? I thought. For an unspecified period of time?

Vikram: Of course, in my head, lockdown was only going to last for two weeks. But the enthusiasm carried me along. From very early on people who had been regulars at the fitness class ed in and said how brilliant it was. Then, it occurred to me that all these people would be stuck at home, possibly for weeks on end, and perhaps this was the only time in their day that was structured, fun, and helped lighten the dark mood. After week three, though, it hit us: how on earth are we going to keep this up? So, we started getting creative; we introduced a 100-squat challenge and a plank challenge, and we even got some of our Facebook and Instagram followers to film themselves live. In the end, we did twelve weeks of daily sessions under the hashtag “Quarantine Cardio.”

Mrinal: I think lockdown was more difficult for Vik. He’s naturally really extroverted, whereas I’m completely the opposite. Given all that Vik went

through at the start of lockdown, he needed something social to focus his energy. So, we discussed how to go further than the workout sessions and reach an even broader range of people. That’s when we thought of livestreaming a festival which would incorporate dance, music, live performances, poetry, and discussions.

Vikram: The festival also came from the realization that, while both of us still had full-time jobs and we’d been able to reach out to a lot of people with the classes, others— especially artists—were struggling. They weren’t just struggling with having no work, they were isolated from an audience as well. This was something that we wanted Bounce Bhangra to address. Alongside the shoulder shrugs and the bouncing, we do cool-downs that incorporate yoga stretching and deep breathing—perfect for improving your mood and promoting mental well-being.

Mrinal: With this in mind, we partnered with a charity ing mental health problems within black and ethnic minority groups, and we also raised funds for the artists. We chose the theme “Urban Desi” and invited Bhangra and Bollywood artists to livestream from their homes. One DJ told us she was asked to play Bhangra and Bollywood all the time and all she wanted was to play Deep House and Techno. We said, “Go for it!”

Vikram: The festival was quite a hit and we ended up raising around £400. It’s spurred us on to organise another online event, called the Lioness Festival, which focuses on women’s empowerment. This time around we are going to fundraise in partnership with a charity set up to alleviate period poverty. There will still be music and dancing, but we are also including sessions on activism, education, and entrepreneurship.

Mrinal: As for us, twelve weeks of high-energy dance has had immeasurable benefits. It has increased our stamina significantly. We have also had kids ing in with our classes; our nephew thinks we’re online fitness celebrities like Joe Wicks! We now have followers from all over the world. One woman in Canada was ing live on her lunch hour and we’ve even had elderly people in India tuning in just for entertainment.

Vikram: We have gotten to know people so much better and learned a lot about our students. One woman, who is a banker, said that without our sessions she would have just continued working all day long. We’ve also expanded our network of artists and musicians and there’s been a lot of camaraderie.I still don’t know when I will get married. Life for everyone has been so confusing. But we hope that throughout this time, we’vebeen able to put a smile on people’s faces and bring everyone together through Bhangra.our sessions she would have just continued working all day long. We’ve also expanded our network of artists and musicians and there’s been a lot of camaraderie.I still don’t know when I will get married. Life for everyone has been so confusing. But we hope that throughout this time, we’vebeen able to put a smile on people’s faces and bring everyone together through Bhangra. our sessions she would have just continued working all day long. We’ve also expanded our network of artists and musicians and there’s been a lot of camaraderie. I still don’t know when I will get married. Life for everyone has been so confusing. But we hope that throughout this time, we’ve been able to put a smile on people’s faces and bring everyone together through Bhangra.

VIKRAM AND MRINAL SETH

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