In the event of a pandemic, when the world around you changes over night and measures are introduced that mean you’re not able to go out, it can be difficult to find the best way to support your local community. After the ‘lock down’ was introduced, that’s the situation I found myself in: I felt hopeless. From my laptop at home I joined every local COVID-19 Mutual Aid group and every volunteering group I came across, reaching out to people across the community to see how I could help.
I watched the TV helplessly and saw the pressure that the NHS was under (especially in London) — it’s a wonderfully supportive gesture that brings the whole country together at a very strange time for all of us , but cheering on my balcony at 8 on a Thursday evening just didn’t seem enough. I’ve seen first-hand what pressure looks like in the NHS; especially in intensive care units.
Scrolling through the community and mutual aid groups on Facebook, I saw a plea from ‘Help Lewisham Hospital ’, an amazing initiative that was set up to help feed NHS staff, and I knew that that was my opportunity to help.
Greenwich is a great community and I knew that, just as we’d all cheered from our balconies or gardens, we would come together to provide further support. So, I posted a message asking for donations on the East Greenwich Mutual Aid group and my local development Facebook group. The responses were immediate. Following social distancing rules, I arranged to collect these donations from across the community.
At the same time, Jason from the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Peninsula group, reached out with the same request to local residents. We teamed up and across our two locations — in a matter of days — we managed to collect two full car loads of donations, which we split across the two hospitals that support our community: Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich & Lewisham.
We were both blown away by the generosity of our community. On Thursday morning, we packed up the car and headed off to QEH early in the morning to deliver the donations we’d collected. The NHS staff were overwhelmed with emotion and quickly set about making care packages for the different hospital wards. One little boy from our community also made a really lovely card to thank all of the doctors and nurses. The messages of thanks from QEH have been humbling; we have done so little for them in relation to what they are doing to save the lives of the people in our community.
Later that afternoon, the car was re-loaded and we headed down to Lewisham High Street to do the same for the NHS staff at Lewisham Hospital — where they are feeding 150 NHS staff each day.
The response from both hospitals and community has been overwhelming and we were keen to continue our support. So, with the help of volunteers across the Mutual Aid groups and our community, we are working together to continue for as long as our NHS need us.
Thank you to everyone who has supported our NHS. What we are doing is a small gesture but hopefully it helps our amazing NHS staff to know that the communities they serve are right behind them and trying to support them wherever we can.
