Page 12 - Communities Respond to COVID-19

We have experienced some benefits of intentional community during hurricanes and their aftermath.
Now we are grateful to discover the benefits of intentional community during a pandemic.

Tom Clark
Putney Commons, VT, USA

We are well-connected with each other. Many of us share walking dates for exercise, help each other in
the garden or work together trimming paths on our nearly 12 acres. We share garden tools, as we have
always done. When one member feared she might have the virus, we supported her in being tested -
but she did not have it. Whew!

Some of our members are more vulnerable than others due to age or lung/heart issues. We respect
their needs and reach out to help them.
Elizabeth Christie

GreenRise Intentional Community, Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois,

USA

There has been stress. Our community has 30 members. About a fourth think we need very disciplined
health safety measures, about a fourth think there is no need for them to be extreme, and about half
more or less are inclined to have more safety procedures than not but they're rather relaxed about it.
Those estimates may not be completely accurate but they do represent a difference in opinion. This all
came to the fore when some from the "more minimum safety procedures" people wanted to create an
exercise room (something to which we have never really given much thought). This horrified the the
"maximum safety people." In our last community meeting, the issue was not really resolved but the gym
people pushed forward, many think in a very heavy handed way, and went ahead and created the gym.
The coronavirus situation, therefore, occasioned a discord that probably would have never surfaced
without. First, interest in the gym was largely driven my the "shelter in place" orders and second
opposition was strong because it was seen as a risky practice. The good news is that there now is a
general agreement that our community should objectify its decision-making process and make it much
more clear by putting it in writing. There was never much motivation to do this in the past due to some
unique conditions in our community. The fracture making this necessary has appeared precisely because
of matters related directly to the virus.

Terry Bergdall

Unnamed housing cooperative, Illinois, USA

Cleaning high touch surfaces. Stopped communal meals. No guests in the houses.

Indian Social Service Institute, Tamilnadu, India

Adopt regular hand washing, use masks and social distancing in our community. Help by distribution of
food to daily wage earners living around us suffering by lock down

Ramaswamy Rengaraju