Sometimes the unexpected consequences of a solitary thought can really turn into something amazing!
On the morning of March 17, 2020 I was laying in bed reading about how the world was shutting down. The news was grim. Like most people I was thinking about what would happen after our 2 week shut down.
As we all know, that 2 weeks stretched into many months and things still aren't really the same but there were some interested consequences of a thought I had on that morning.
Before I even got out of bed I created a Facebook group based on one I'd seen earlier called COVID 19_Coming Together Vancouver. The group admins encouraged people from other places to make one for their city.
By the end of the day there were over 200 people in my group! I quickly realized that the community of North Vancouver was filled with a bunch of do-gooders and that I might be able to work out a way for us all to help our neighbours.
My own parents were living in Ontario. Too far for me to help them. They were close to 90 and not used to having to ask for help. They really had no idea where to look. That made me realized that there must be a fair few North Van folks in a similar boat. How were we going to help them?
By my birthday on March 29th the group had over 1000 people in it! That's when I knew we were on to something. By this point we had connected a few seniors in the community with volunteers who would do their shopping or grab their prescriptions. They became "shopping buddies" and many are still partnered up today!
Getting the word out about @northvancares was a big challenge since the people we wanted to help weren't on social media much. So several volunteers from the group decided they'd hand out brochures at places seniors frequented. (like Shoppers Drug Mart, Lynn Valley) It worked! I got call after call from folks who needed help!
Those early days lead to a whole army of folks that wanted to help out. The Facebook group grew to over 3700 and we were able to do a lot more with that notoriety.
In the next post I'll go into details about how you, too, can inspire your community to do good works.
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