Tag: volunteer

Vaccine-a-Palooza

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond2 Comments

The parking lot at the Southside Church of Christ transformed last Friday into a “pop-up vaccine clinic,” stood up in minutes like a MASH unit by dozens of volunteers recruited through an innovative non-profit. What could epitomize the American moment more than this — can-do entrepreneurialism and compassion, in service of patching the cracks of a fractured, leaking healthcare system. This clinic was the creation of the Shared Harvest Fund’s MyCovidMD initiative, founded by Dr. NanaEfua Afoh-Manin to “help under-resourced communities get free testing and access to telehealth services during the Coronavirus Public Health crisis.” And now to get them vaccinated.

I met Dr. Nana, as she was introduced at the event, when she arrived and began unloading boxes of PPE and Girl Scout Cookies at the hospitality station. After every essential station for the event had been set up, she gathered the volunteers and set our intention for the day. She explained that as an ER doctor witnessing countless families needlessly destroyed by this disease, she decided she had to do more to help prevent people from getting it in the first place.

She stated her three goals for the day: Save lives (obviously). Be safe (volunteers received N-95 masks, face shields and gloves). And have fun.

Which explains the DJ station.

Upbeat music could be heard throughout the day at every station. It carried to the registration table, where volunteers navigated iPads and laptops to confirm appointments and make sure all information was integrated with the state’s record-keeping. The medical pros at each of four vaccination stations could sing along as they asked “right arm or left?” The newly vaccinated could watch the whole party unfold as they waited fifteen minutes in an observation area, watched and timed by volunteers in case of any post-vaccine reactions. Once the timer beeped, they could walk, drive, or dance their way out past the last station, named Seventh Heaven (aka the hospitality booth). There they would receive a goody bag that included one of those boxes of Girl Scout cookies Dr. Nana had provided, as well as hand sanitizer, leaflets about the vaccines, and a long-stemmed red rose. Seventh Heaven is MyCovidMD’s “signature element” and may seem like just a sweet touch, but it serves a crucial clinical role: folks leaving with a smile may just tell their friends and family, “Go get that vaccine. It was a blast.”

And, oddly, it was a blast. We cheered for each person as we brought them their gift bag, joyful that they were safer from the disease, visibly relieved of some anxiety. Indeed, I felt my own anxiety ratchet down knowing that with every vaccination we were all that much safer. We were gong to beat this. We were on our way, collectively. The DJ chose great songs, and we were in the mood to dance and sing. “This is by far my best day of the pandemic,” Christopher said. My niece agreed, summing it up, “This is the closest to Coachella I’m going to get this year.”

Vaccine-a-palooza – MyCovidMD’s volunteers get in the spirit

And yet, as uplifting as the day was, at times what struck me was a certain absurdity. This is what we have come to — a global pandemic met by a volunteer-led drive-through medical clinic with a DJ and balloons. I could not help but flash to a television news report from the UK, with its seemingly orderly appointment system, every citizen trusting that they would be cared for in due course. This pop-up clinic’s existence may be a triumph, but the need for it is an indictment.

We ran out of Girl Scout Cookies after 200 vaccinations, and had to make due with lesser goody bags. Thankfully, a local restaurant had donated 250 packaged salads, so my friend Monica grabbed a salad, dressing, and plastic wrapped fork, and bopped over to a waiting car. Projecting to be heard over the music and through her N-95 mask and face shield, she presented her gifts with sincere enthusiasm and joy: “Nothing says celebration like a salad!”

Her mouth was hidden from their view, but you could damn well hear her smile.

More about Shared Harvest Fund from its website:

“In helping to found Shared Harvest Fund, Dr. Nana has created a committed organization that works to combat socioeconomic disparities in healthcare through initiatives that advance holistic health outcomes for under-resourced communities globally.

“When COVID-19 struck, disparities in equal access to healthcare across the United States became even more apparent. Dr. Nana worked tirelessly to found the Shared Harvest myCovidMD™ initiative, in an endeavor to provide equal access to coronavirus testing and much-needed social services for the communities that would face the highest rates of mortality due to COVID-19. “myCovidMD is our tactical response to a systemically unequal public health and education system,” Dr. Nana has stated. Since its inception, the initiative has provided free pop-up community-based testing by building trust, administering tests, and tethering community members to a network of Community Health Partners (CHPs). What’s more, it has also self-funded a Student Loan Relief Fund for frontline volunteers and essential workers. The myCovidMD™ initiative has received accolades for its effectiveness in drawing the largest percentage of underrepresented minorities and refugees to testing sites seen across the country.”

Save One Life, Save the World?

Published on by Laura Nicole DiamondLeave a comment

The world needs — has always needed — everyday heroes, every kind act and impulse each of us can offer.

So I am excited to be moderating a panel discussion called “Save One Life, Save the World?“ on October 23, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. as part of Palisades Reads, a new annual community literary event whose mission is to foster connection, spark conversation, and celebrate books for their ability to build empathy. The panel relates to the themes in my novel, Shelter Us (Indiebound, Amazon, library), the story of a grieving mother who finds solace helping a young homeless mother regain her stability. In the words of one reviewer, the novel asks readers to consider, “How far would you go to help a stranger in need?” 

What compels ordinary people to step outside their comfort zone to help others? The panelists are not superheroes, but regular folks whose hearts led them to take steps, then more steps, leading to the founding of agencies that help homeless youth, that innovate how to connect homeless individuals to services, and that provide counsel and community to grieving families.

These everyday heroes are living proof of Alicia Keys‘ words: “What people often assume is that in order to make change a reality, you have to have some kind of superhuman quality and power inside of you. You don’t have to be a politician, or a scholar or a singer or a celebrity to recognize a problem and work towards fixing it by empowering others around you to take up the fight. You have to be you and that makes it all the more valiant.”

To honor everyday heroes, in a countdown to the panel I will be sharing stories about people who are making the world better with small and large acts of kindness. I hope their stories will send ripples of inspiration, to tell anyone who wonders if they can make a difference: Yes, you can. And yes, you must, for no one else can bring forth your unique gifts. It’s all hands on deck.

To start, today I’m sharing this op-ed and this AirTalk interview with author/actress Annabelle Gurwitch, in which she describes her experience welcoming a homeless couple into her home through a pilot project with Safe Place for Youth (one of the participants in the Palisades Reads panel Oct 23, 6:30 p.m.) 

Let’s send ripples of kindness out into the world. Please share this post, and leave a comment about who inspires you, or how you help others. Our world need every single small act of big-heartedness it can get.

And please join me if you can for an inspiring, motivating, heart-lifting evening:

“Save One Life, Save the World” Panel, October 23, 2019, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.

Pacific Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real Drive, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

With love,

Laura

#saveonelifesavetheworld  #everydayheroes

#kindnessmatters

 

How to Help a Homeless Veteran

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond4 Comments

My grandfather was a war hero.

Grandpa Jack
My son’s artistic rendering of his revered great-grandfather.

I don’t mean because of his actions as a soldier in World War II, which were indeed heroic. I’m thinking instead of the heroism inherent in returning from the brutality of war and every horror that entailed, to take his place again as a husband and father, working hard to support his family, quietly and without recognition, like so many of his peers. Heroes.

A shameful percentage of veterans today do not have that opportunity for a simple life. They are homeless.

It’s terrible, we all know that, but maybe you’re like me, and get stymied at the “what can I, one small person, do?” Here’s one thing. Support an organization that helps veterans. Here’s one: PATH (People Assisting The Homeless).

PATH has housed 900 Veterans this year, as well as many other homeless individuals and families.

To support PATH, join “The Imaginary Feast” — which invites you to donate the amount you might spend on a night out, instead of asking you to come to a big fancy event. (Great idea, right?)

Imaginary Feast

Give Thanks, Give Turkeys

Published on by Laura Nicole DiamondLeave a comment

A dozen volunteers hustled back and forth with groceries in their arms. Empty boxes filled the driveway and front yard of the small house cradled between the 105 and the 110 interchange. Taking care not to disturb their hosts’ carefully tended native plants, children and adults filled 125 boxes with groceries, to be delivered to hungry neighbors.

This scene has been replayed every month for fourteen years. On the last Sunday of the month, when many families in the neighborhood have empty pantries and are waiting for another pay day, the volunteers of “One on One Outreach” do their part to fill a need. The idea was the brainchild of the man at whose house we worked, who realized that his neighbors were going hungry.

I went this month with my husband, our seven-year-old son and fifteen-year-old niece. Alongside first-timers and veterans, we used our hands, arms, backs, legs and hearts. Like ants building a hill, we busied ourselves carrying this month’s assorted food and sundries, collected, sorted and stored each month by our host. Potatoes, plums and peaches. Bologna, granola bars and pistachios. Laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid and baby powder.

I wondered how my seven-year-old would fare. It’s physical work –  two hours of lifting, bending, stuffing, organizing and checking that every box is complete. He became a boy on a mission. He carried gallons of juice down the long aisle of boxes, he saw to it that every box got a sack of potatoes, he ensured the plums would not be bruised. He grew three inches with the importance of his work.

We loaded the heavy boxes onto two pickup trucks, one suffering from time and use, the other shiny and sturdy. They cruised two short blocks, flimsy bungee cords miraculously holding boxes stacked six high. We followed on foot in the middle of the street (part of the fun for a seven year old).

We stopped at the first apartment building. One by one we carried boxes to appreciative families, until they were quickly gone.

My son and my niece, who have never known an empty pantry, or a refrigerator that couldn’t be restocked, glimpsed into the apartments and lives of people not born with that same gift. Overhearing his dad describing to me how many people were crammed into one particular apartment, our son said softly, hopefully, “But they have a happy life.” Noticing a courtyard of grass and cement, he said, “They have a lot of room to play outside.”

I wondered how to frame my response. Like all of us, he was trying to make sense of what he saw, of the disparity between his circumstances and those of the kids in front of him. I didn’t want him to feel pity, but empowerment and action. And while it’s true that anyone can be happy or sad — rich or poor — it’s a lot easier to be happy when your tummy is full. I thought of the tantrum my son threw two nights earlier, when he didn’t like what I’d made for dinner. I let his observation stand. “That’s true,” I said, “there’s lots of room to play.”

The next night would be Halloween, but in contrast to our neighborhood, there were few decorations. Our host and one of his neighbors are the only ones who hand out candy, he told me, and the kids just go back and forth between the two houses until they run out. He showed me boxes of treats stacked by his front door, ready for trick-or-treaters. “I usually hand out about a thousand,” he said.

We had promised our son one more trip to buy Halloween decorations, so after we finished, we headed back to West L.A to do that. We dropped twenty bucks on things that, despite my best intentions, will likely be thrown away or lost before next year – cotton spider webs, plastic bones, a kitty cat tail.

On Halloween, we accepted a friend’s invitation to join her in Malibu Colony. We passed through guarded gates to beachside mansions professionally decorated in elaborate ghoulish fashion. Up and down the street, generous hosts handed out fistfuls of candy or full-size candy bars. One offered an open bar and encouraged donations to UNICEF. All around us were revelers enjoying the decadent night, filling up on empty calories and joy.

“Twenty-four hours ago we were handing out groceries,” my husband reminded me, as we sat on the deck of a beach house listening to the ocean. It felt like much longer. Good thing we only have to wait until the Sunday before Thanksgiving for our next opportunity. “Bring gloves,” we were advised. “Those frozen turkeys get really cold.”

We will be there. Maybe you will, too.

Donate frozen turkeys to One on One Outreach, at Kehillat Israel Reconstructionist Congregation of Pacific Palisades, 16019 Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. Frozen turkeys will be collected there November 13, 14 and 15, and November 18. Contact me with questions.

What’s your favorite way to help others? Do you have a Thanksgiving tradition? Please share it.