In 2020, community members from all over the Historic Triangle came together to create a collaborative community response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Williamsburg Health Foundation (WHF) created a video to memorialize some of that work.
“As we prepared a video for our annual awards for 2021, we were focused on ‘Lasting Innovation,’ from the pandemic. Even though the future was really the topic of the video, we kept hearing accounts from the recent past of what local organizations did to respond to the pandemic,” said Kyra Cook of Williamsburg Health Foundation.
“The stories we heard made it clear that there was history we needed to capture,” said Cook. “This included stories of the origins of Peninsula COVID Operations group which included emergency response teams from the City of Williamsburg as well as James City and York Counties.”
“The video also includes stories from individuals and organizations involved in the COVID-19 Community Collaboration – and, of course, these groups overlapped to maximize community outreach,” said Cook.
The Williamsburg Health Foundation was hesitant to produce a video about these first-person accounts because the staff understood that as many stories good and inspiring stories that were told, there would be many stories that would remain untold. “It’s hard to produce something that you know cannot tell the whole story of a major event; at the same time, we knew there was a great deal we could and should document,” said Carol L. Sale, President and CEO of WHF.
Throughout the pandemic local government, nonprofit agencies, and faith communities have worked together to provide critical services.
“When this pandemic began in 2020, many of us could only imagine the worst: hungry children stuck at home with no food, people sleeping outside to isolate, and seniors leaving their homes at great risk, families evicted because of lost jobs and inability to pay rent,” said Sale.
“I encourage people to watch this 12-minute video to better understand some of the way this community came together to care for each other during the pandemic.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic showed some of the best citizenship and servant leadership within Greater Williamsburg. The Williamsburg Health Foundation is honored to have captured some community highlights of the COVID-19 community-response story,” said Sale.
Watch the video below or click here
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