COVID-Free Delivery

Eagles respond to neighbors in need

By Eastern Magazine

For some of the university community’s most vulnerable, COVID-19 made already difficult situations that much worse. But it didn’t take long for members of the Eagle family to jump into action.  Within days of coronavirus shutdowns, a group of five friends, each with a connection to EWU, quickly organized the West Plains Emergency Response Volunteers group on Facebook.

“We were looking at the situation and knew community would be key,” says co-founder and volunteer Chris Valeo, who is also a professor and director of English studies at Eastern.

The group developed a method to provide assistance, such as grocery delivery, to individuals and families living in the Cheney School District area, though recipients do not need to have children in Cheney schools.

For the organizers, it was important that the service was confidential. They thus created a system that focused on discretion as well as the health and safety of recipients and volunteers. Here’s how it works: When a community member signals a need for assistance via Facebook, a single administrator messages the individual. That administrator then assigns the delivery of aid to a volunteer, who knows the recipient only by his or her number on a spreadsheet. The volunteers can pick up prescriptions, get groceries or do other shopping.

When it is time to deliver, the quarantined individual or family is asked to place a box or a cooler in a designated location, such as their front porch. The volunteer places the items in the box and alerts the WPEV administrator, who lets the recipient know that the delivery has landed safely on their front stoop.

Beyond privacy, the procedure also ensures that the volunteers do not touch anything at the home. Quarantined community members are encouraged to wash or disinfect their deliveries before use, while volunteers are asked to wash their hands often and abstain from helping out if they are not feeling well. Organizers of the effort say that coming together as a community is the best way to protect each other as we negotiate through the COVID-19 situation. Valeo says she and other volunteers are also getting their families and children involved.

“I took my son, a senior at Cheney High School, with me to a delivery,” she says. “It’s important to show our kids how we can help.”