JUL 10 2020
By Emily Crane Linn, Executive Director
So much has happened since we made the difficult decision to shift to remote services in March. As we all know, Washington and Benton counties are two major hotspots for Covid-19 right now. The outbreak has been particularly prevalent in poultry plants, where many of our clients work.
The Impact
1. To date, we have had 3 confirmed cases of Covid-19 among our families, and we are currently waiting on the results for two additional individuals who are asymptomatic but had an exposure. Thankfully, the cases in our community have been mild and no one needed a hospitalization. All individuals who were positive are now fully recovered and have returned to work after their quarantine period, and none of their household members contracted the virus. All of these cases were transmitted through the poultry plants where our clients work.
2. While the health outcomes so far have been good, those who have tested positive have had to self-quarantine, leaving them out of work for two full weeks. Unfortunately, it is still uncertain whether they will be paid during this time. This has added financial stress to an already stressful situation for these families.
3. School closures have had both academic and financial impacts on our families. Although everyone did their best to navigate remote learning in the spring, our kids—particularly those in ESL classrooms—struggled to keep up. The ESL teachers are concerned that this prolonged time away from the classroom could wipe out years of English gains. School closures have also meant food insecurity for our families who rely on the free and reduced lunch program.
4. The virus has continued to impact our clients’ employment. Clients have been laid off or seen reduced hours due to closures and cutbacks in the hospitality and food service industry. Clients have also been unable to get to work due to reduced availability of public transportation.
Our Response
In order to make sure our families have the support they need right now, we have taken the following measures:
1. Health literacy: Since the early days of the virus, we have been touching base with our clients over the phone regularly to check in on any needs they may have and to make sure they have the latest and most accurate information about Covid-19. In June, as cases began to spike, we held a virtual workshop over Zoom with the help of interpreters to educate our families about how to keep themselves and their families safe and limit the spread of the virus. We have also been disseminating translated materials from the CDC to our families as they’ve become available.
2. Employment services: Our Employment Specialist has worked with families to address their employment needs as they have arisen. This has included applying for new jobs for those who were laid off and securing unemployment benefits in the interim. Canopy is also been working closely with our contacts in the poultry plants to ensure our clients receive all the paid leave to which they are entitled and to advocate for more widespread testing and better communication with their employees.
3. Connectivity: We surveyed every refugee household to determine each family’s access to internet and a personal computing device. Thanks to grant funding, every refugee household now has a laptop or tablet and a WiFi connection to enable them to access virtual learning and stay physically distant but socially connected.
4. Summer programming for ESL students: Once it became clear that in-person instruction would not resume this spring, our Youth Services Coordinator began working with the ESL instructors at the Springdale and Fayetteville schools to design a virtual mentoring program for ESL students. Thanks to some additional grant funding, we were to extend this to non-refugee students as well and have a total of 39 students enrolled to date. All students are matched with mentors who meet with them several times a week over Zoom to practice English and improve their digital literacy skills in the event that they should need to access remote learning in the fall. Our Youth Services Coordinator is also working closely with our parents to make sure they have all the information they need to make good decisions around in-person versus virtual instruction for the fall.
5. Food distribution: While the schools have had food available for all families in need, most of our families have been unable to access them due to transportation issues or schedule conflicts, so we stepped in to do weekly food distribution through the Fayetteville Outback Pantry and St. James Food Pantry to all our families who would otherwise be accessing free and reduced lunch. Thanks to a partnership with Seeds that Feed, we are distributing fresh produce from the Farmers’ Markets once a week. We have also partnered with UAMS to coordinate food distribution multiple times a week for families with positive Covid-19 cases so that they can properly self-quarantine.
6. Financial assistance: Thanks to your incredible generosity, we were able to raise over $11,000 for our Crisis Relief Fund. So far, we have disbursed $3,400 of that to families in need and expect that we will continue to rely on this fund to cover gaps in pay during sick leave, loss of income due to layoffs, unpaid medical bills, or other shortfalls arising from the virus. Because it looks like this virus will be with us for a while, we anticipate that needs will continue to trickle in steadily for the foreseeable future. Thank you for your generosity toward us and our families and for giving us the capacity to respond to these needs swiftly and simply. We’ve also seen many of you looking out for our refugee neighbors on your own by organizing your own fundraisers and facilitating your own food distribution efforts and we’re so grateful to see that. Our community is amazing—all the more so in this difficult time.
Going Forward
Thanks to funding from the state, we have been able to reconfigure our office to allow for limited in-person activities to resume. We’ll be able to resume in-person meetings with clients through advanced appointments. Our office now has plexiglass dividers, masks and thorough sanitizing protocols in place to keep everyone safe. We are going to launch our new entrepreneurship training course this month in-person as well (stay tuned for more news on that very soon!). We’re limiting the group to 9 in-person attendees in a large space and will also record the classes so that they can be available virtually. We’ll continue to follow the news on school re-openings very soon and are standing by to help ensure our kids get back to school safely and effectively in the fall, whether in person or online.
There is a lot we don’t know about in regards to how the upcoming year will look, but we’re taking our cues from our clients. They model resiliency, adaptability and innovation every day, global pandemic or not. We aim to learn from them and follow their lead as we move forward together through these uncertain times.
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