Dear TRENDS Diary,
Students from Watershed School in Boulder are finding new ways to connect with their community during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Students were able to choose outreach projects that they were passionate about, and I chose an interesting opportunity to directly connect with others in my community.
My classmates and I have been exchanging letters and words of encouragement with residents of various nursing homes, as well as essential workers. We’ve also been encouraged to write notes and letters of gratitude to people in our personal lives to spread the love while in isolation.
Sometimes it’s hard to feel like you’re making a difference when you’re not out in the world actively doing things, bringing food to peoples’ doors or volunteering, but it’s important to remember that we really are making an impact. We’re getting to know people that we wouldn’t otherwise, and it’s been a great experience so far.
It’s important for us to reach out to seniors and essential workers because many of them are feeling more isolated than the rest of us nowadays. It’s a great experience for us too, to hear different perspectives on these issues from other generations. Especially as teens, we get caught up in social bubbles and don’t really socialize with people outside of our age range, so it’s been a fun step out of that usual social blockade.
Of course we’re living in difficult times right now, and even though we have to stay physically distant from one another, we’re socially connecting in ways we wouldn’t otherwise.
– Jenna Sutton, as told to Keira Leaves
