Supporting healthcare and frontline heroes 👏❤️👏

The increased amount of time I’ve been spending at home these last couple months has allowed me to get to know my neighbors and my local surroundings — and the ways people are demonstrating support and offering to help one another. Over the past week, I’ve seen people on the street wave to each other, heard a neighbor offer to pick up groceries for an elderly couple, and have seen little drawings of rainbows with “we’ll get through this together” taped to the neighbor’s windows. Every evening at 7:30, I hear the clamoring of pots and pans, a new and hopefully lasting ritual of making noise to acknowledge and recognize health care and frontline workers.

Unprecedented times are a call for creative pivots. At Normative, we’ve changed our giving strategy to focus our monthly giving to support COVID-19 relief efforts. This is one of several pivots that our team and our clients have had to do in order to adapt and accommodate changing needs and demands. One of the silver linings for those of us who are (working from) home is that this time is a good opportunity for learning and skill-sharing.

Currently, we are prototyping a high-resolution thermal and optical camera to monitor and track body temperature. Given that fever is a common symptom of COVID infection, Normative’s team is building an automated employee health kiosk that would detect elevated body temperature among personnel and visitors. We know that essential and healthcare providers are at higher risk of exposure and we have been exploring alternative ways to use digital tools and tech to mitigate these risks and build safer working environments for the future.

One of our team members, Brian, has been using this time to 3D print personal protective equipment as a part of the Ontario PPE Collective’s mission. Ontario PPE Collective is a network of makers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) who have organized and banded together to create and donate face shields to front line health care workers. Using a modified version of the Prusa Face Shield to offer better protection based on clinical feedback, the face shields are made from accessible and inexpensive materials. The design is also open-source, so anyone can find a way to contribute.

Following Brian’s lead, we have decided to make a donation to Ontario PPE Collective to support their work. If you’re interested in supporting them too, you can volunteer and/or make a donation here). Every $3000 donated allows them to make nearly 1000 face shields!

Ontario PPE Collective’s work is a great example of industries and people equipped with resources pivoting and developing solutions to the devastating acute shortage of protective wear for medical personnel. While this collective is local, the shortage is global, and people with 3D printers, sewing machines, or even just a needle and thread can play a vital role in serving the growing demand for protective equipment through community efforts.

Donations made to Ontario PPE Collective will help them purchase materials for volunteer printers and facilitate delivery to the front line workers. In the last month, they’ve delivered over 900 face shields to hospitals, long term care facilities, and other front line health care workers such as clinicians and PSWs all across Ontario. But their efforts are far from over. Currently, the Collective has over 5000 order requests from nurses and doctors, and the list continues to grow.

One of the critical challenges is scale. The fast spread of COVID-19 means that health care and front line workers are disproportionately exposed, and there is a critical shortage and need for PPE equipment. Currently, Ontario PPE Collective has 60 volunteers working on everything from printing to delivery to operations management, and they hope to grow their team to 100–200 to help meet growing demands.

One takeaway from this challenging time is the need to recognize the labor of front line and essential workers. If this state of crisis teaches us anything, it’s that we need to do better in the future to support, acknowledge, and pay the (often taken for granted) networks of essential workers. These include people working in health care, food and hospitality, waste management, and more, that support the basic functioning of our everyday lives.

As the COVID pandemic is increasingly creating precarious work conditions for essential workers, we have a unique opportunity to pivot, get creative, learn new skills, and optimize digital tools to help support one another. Whether you’re leaning out the window and applauding the work of front line workers, participating in PPE community efforts, or making a donation to initiatives supporting those communities that are more deeply impacted by the pandemic, how can you scale your support and contributions?

This article was written with the support of Yael Hubert 💫