Since the hardships of COVD-19 began to simmer in people’s psyches and in communities for weeks, the creativity inevitably boiled over into new projects or ideas about how to ease the worry and how to soothe the loneliness.
GNN readers each have their own examples of coronakindness—and our inboxes have been inundated with stories of hope and compassion, too many to publish as individual posts.
So as a means of shining a spotlight on these examples of creative community and family support, here are ten sweet stories that our readers have sent in.
1) ‘Please Take What You Need’
Since 63-year-old Julia Frascona has been working from her home in Wisconsin during the pandemic, and decided it would be inspiring to do something to help others.
“Since I have to work from home now, I could structure my day anyway I want. There’s been such a demand for masks, I decided to get out my sewing machine and sew,” Frascona said.
She hang them on a rack positioned in her front yard, so she can give them away to people who are looking for something to protect themselves against the virus.
2) Surprise Paper Bag Mask Zoom Party
GNN reader Andrea sent us a screen capture worthy of the best Halloween party, saying: “My mom threw a surprise paper bag princess-themed Zoom birthday party for my sister.
Her sibling had no idea what was happening and thought she was just having a birthday call with her immediate family members—but family from around the country joined the call disguised in paper bags that they had designed.
“When she logged on, my mom explained that she would get to ask each guest 3 questions to try and figure out who they were!”
“So many laughs, so much fun!”
3) Teachers Sharing Their Love on Easter
Teachers from the Saint Louise Parish School in Bellevue, Washington brought their students’ families to tears on Easter with a video of themselves passing around “Heart-Filled Messages”.
In return for the sweet gesture, the school families then brought the teachers to tears after they planted dozens of handmade yard signs expressing their love and gratitude.
4) Hospital Clowns Get Back to Their Importan Work—From Home
Kaitlin Kaufman, John LeoNimm, Julie Pasqual, Maria Peyramaure, and Andy Sapora are all clowns for Healthy Humor’s Red Nose Doc program, which sends performers to hospitals for children across the country to bring joy, silliness, and laughter to the bedsides of children, their worried parents, and the hard-working hospital staff.
Since being on lockdown, they have been saddened not to be able to cheer up hospital residents in person—so they created this video to try and relieve viewers of some of their worries.
5) Pampering Our Nurses
Orange County Girl Scouts assembled 120 self-care kits to provide healthcare professionals with tokens of gratitude and appreciation for their heroic work on the frontline of the health crisis.
The troop collected a variety of fantastic donated items to include in their bags, such as essential oils, homemade sleep masks, stress balls, candles, face masks, bath bombs, energy drinks, protein bars, meditation coloring books, chocolate, lifesavers, and—of course—Girl Scout cookies. The troop met via ZOOM and each assembled the care kits in their individual homes.
To ensure compliance with social distancing guidelines from local and federal health officials, the troop is working with Lyft on a seamless, end-to-end contactless delivery system to get the kits to local hospitals.
The girls reached out to various companies looking to execute contact-free deliveries, and Lyft responded offering to act as a delivery service in order to facilitate these acts of kindness at no cost to the troop.
6) Chili Cook-off Canceled, but Spicy Kindness Results
Will and Jennifer Thorpe sent GNN the following sweet story from Tennessee:
My dad has been competing in chili cook-offs through the ICS (International Chili Society) across the United States for many years now, and has even competed in the Chili world championship in Las Vegas.
Being as passionate as he is, he was devastated to learn the chili cook-offs would not be happening this year. This past weekend, however, more than 75 chili cooks from around the US, including my dad, took place in the ICS’s first virtual chili cook-off!
My dad put up his entire cooking setup in the back yard, and cooked a mess of chili. He even observed the national anthem (as seen in the image below). Much of the food that the cooks prepared is being donated to first responders, various essential workers, and churches who are feeding the hungry.
7) Kids Just Want to Be Kind
A proud mom, Marisol Mendoza, sent us this:
On Easter Sunday morning, Sofia and Astor Mendoza decided to bring good news to our neighborhood. The day before, they wrote about 150 handwritten notes to be distributed to the neighbors—all because they wanted to bring some positivity to the world. “I just wanted people to smile and feel grateful,” Sofia said after they finished their route.
We are so blessed and grateful to see our kids being proactive and getting involved in serving and bringing joy to other people in the middle of this special time. I know that it is hard for an adult to be positive but for a kid time will pass and we will be just fine.
8) Letters Visit These Seniors When People Can’t
One month ago, Sahil Swali—who is a high school junior in Clifton Park, New York—launched an effort to get letters and art to senior living communities that are not able to accept visitors during the pandemic.
He has now partnered with more than 30 facilities in the upstate New York area, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and has a key partnership with St. Peter’s Health Partners to get messages to their facilities.
These facilities and communities are now receiving hundreds of messages—and he’s looking to enroll more facilities, writers and drawers. If you want to learn how you can join Sahil’s labor of love, you check out his Write to Appreciate project website.
9) Reminder Bracelets Left on Doorsteps
Cassandra Freeman—a self-professed “mompreneur” wanted to give people hope during this time of uncertainty, so she purchased a ton of wrist bands with the hashtag #CoronavirusCantWin to remind people that we will overcome this and that we will get through this.
Freeman has since started leaving the wrist bands in little bags on people’s porches.
10) Climbing Stairs to Support Health Care
People from all over the world are “virtually hiking” in solidarity with children in Haiti who climb the equivalent of 200 flights of stairs in order to get to school—and the effort is raising funds to support healthcare and education initiatives in 24 schools.
Since there have been confirmed COVID-19 cases in Haiti, funding from this campaign will also support critical public health programming.
The Hike for Haiti Challenge runs through May 17th and people are committing to “hiking” the equivalent distance that these children travel simply to access education.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is just one of many positive stories and updates that are coming out of the COVID-19 news coverage this week. For more uplifting coverage on the outbreaks, click here.
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