
Weekly team meetings in lockdown
It was early March, we had all the preparations in place for an event on March 12th, but the air was buzzing with news that a pandemic was heading our way. Unsure of what to do, but sensing a rise in anxiety among those due to attend, we took the decision to cancel. People were grateful! A week later Boris Johnson announced a countrywide lockdown. Our office volunteers retreated to the safety of their homes. It was at this point that I took stock and completely appreciated the immense amount of work that our heroic back-office IT volunteer based in Amsterdam, Paul Ginsburg, had done, along with his trusted second in command Jack Baum, to ensure we had our office safely on the cloud. Everyone was able to log in from home and work remotely. The transition was seamless and pain-free. Read more here.
So at least we knew that operationally we were robust, but two of our volunteers who had, up to this point, had the responsibility of organising our charity events, were beginning to realise that their role was all but redundant. Events? What events! Of course, that had serious implications since it meant the tap had been turned off for our events income, potential donations and opportunities to build awareness. This of course was a great cause for concern.
Equally, we were deeply concerned about the world and how COVID-19 was affecting people’s lives, our communities in Belarus, and businesses, jobs, travel, the leisure industry – well basically everything and everyone, everywhere. Of the grants that we had in application, some came back saying they were not going to give in the current climate, others said they would not be giving at this time, or were diverting support to those directly affected and dealing with COVID-19.
Meanwhile, in Belarus, it seemed that little was being done in acknowledgement of the virus. We sent our office the guidelines being issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and urged our team to wear face masks and help get that message to as many people as they could to do the same. We sent recommendations for the elderly community members, ghetto survivors and those with underlying health conditions to stay home and stay safe where they could. We explained how we were starting to up our use of Zoom, and we explained that communities there could do the same.
As we were trying to understand how we might be impacted as an organisation, we received news of the death of Polina Dobkina, one of the survivors of the Minsk Ghetto, whose story we had included into the book we translated ‘We Remember Lest the World Forget – Memories of the Minsk Ghetto’. Polina was 94 when she died and just as the first lockdown was announced, so we were asked by her family in the USA to set up an appeal in her name to support the work of The Together Plan. As one door closes, so another one opens. Was Polina watching us? Did she know that we were facing the possibility of tough times? It certainly felt that way.
Our Aid Together Programme went on hold as all the volunteers were confined to their homes in the lockdown and our venue for packing and sorting our donations closed its doors.
As we realised that physical events would not be possible for some time, we decided to redefine the roles of our office volunteers. Gillian Gruder agreed to take responsibility for the archive research enquiries – from people looking for help finding family records in Belarus, and Michelle Rose began testing recipes, writing them up for the website and researching connections to Belarus. Meanwhile, Elaine Collins agreed to take on more of a lead to support the Aid Together volunteers.