šš How to keep celebrating during Social Distancing
Weāre just closing out the first quarter of the year, and the countryās officially & unofficially on quarantine from social gatherings. Who could have imagined?
I definitely couldnāt have! I for one, had already bought my dress & been working with one of the planners on Hostowambe to prepare for my birthday party this weekend.
Unfortunately, fast forward to today. Not only has my party been cancelled, but so have many events and celebrations around the world. We support the spirit of cancel everything to #FlattenTheCurve, but we recognize the need to continue to celebrate moments ā big or small!
Okay, so maybe not like that.
But between weddings, birthday parties, soon-to-virtual graduations ā some of lifeās biggest moments are taking a backseat. We want to help! Weāve listed a few ways to still celebrate and find community during this time. We know we didnāt capture everything, but we hope it inspires you to keep the spirits up and find ways to virtually get together!
Thanks to instructions like these, weāre seeing a rise of virtual events! Weāre excited to share a few of our favorites that have popped up on the scene.
Outside of more group check-ins with family & friends, hereās what weāre seeing:
š Virtual Birthday Parties
Theyāre becoming a thing! Create party hats, bake a cake, and setup a zoom call for your family & friends to join in. We donāt recommend trying to group sing happy birthday, though!
šGraduation
Canāt even imagine what this will look like ā but weāre keeping our eye out for livestreams & virtual hat tosses!
š¶Virtual Baby Showers
It didnāt take the virus to start these! But not everyone is royalty ā so pop down to the next picture for tactical suggestions.
šVirtual dance party
We recommend Zoom, Crowdcast, Skype, or Google Hangouts for free and simple solutions to set this up. If you do a dance party, this is a great way to hire + support your DJ friends in a time of less gigs!
š½Cook together with friends
Look through recipes and create your own āvirtual cooking show,ā or follow a recipe together with friends and vote on who made it best.
š» Virtual conferences
Weāre impressed by the speed and agility for people to pivot their conferences online. These are a few options that have been scheduledā but if you know of others, let us know and weāll try to get the word out :)
šBook clubs
šVirtual happy hour + meetups
Iām definitely considering hosting a virtual Sip & Paintā¦but this list is a good place to start :)
If you just want organic social time, the Hostowambe team will be hosting our own virtual socials throughout the week as well! Feel free to pop-in :)
š²Virtual game night
Who says you can only do Mafia or Resistance in-person?
š„Throw a watch party
This is a great way to be able to watch and do live commentary with friends as things go down! Kast and Facebook Live are a great place to start.
šVolunteer
Thereās many ways to give back in this time! Find whatever ways you can to support the community by running errands or financially supporting communities that are taking a hit. If you have the privilege to, encourage your company to do so as well!
šŖKeep your wellness in check for post-Corona socials
And finally, we canāt predict whenā¦but we know once the tide rolls over, there will be many reasons to celebrate in person. Make sure that you stay mentally & physically healthy for those celebrations!
We couldnāt agree more ā and hope this helped in the meantime! If you try out any of these, please tag us @hostowambe ā we would love to celebrate with you!
We may not know tomorrow ā but we can still celebrate today. We canāt wait to see the virtual owambeās that you do!
Need help planning one of the above or just want someone to bounce ideas off? Message our team at hello@hostowambe.com or hit us up on social (Instagram | Twitter)!
š Since we get it a lotā¦what does Hostowambe mean?
In Yoruba, owambe usually refers to a Nigerian party with lots of food, dancing, drinks, and festivities. Our philosophy is that everyone should be able to āhostā owambe.