At this difficult time during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important that we all stay connected. Reaching out to our family, neighbors and loved-ones means finding new ways to connect and discovering resources we need to help one another. Some of us are living alone — single parents, seniors and elderly – where it is important to look for ways to make this pandemic situation a little easier for those cut-off. Social distancing is one of the hardest things that we are all facing right now. To safely help your family, friends, loved ones, neighbors, seniors and your co-workers often now means to help with the touch of your phone, tablet or computer. Luckily, just about anything can be found on the internet. So, each and every one of us can play our part in helping others. safely networking in local communities can be done. Let’s explore that a bit here.
Face Masks for Safety
During this pandemic, we’re having to stay home and not able to hug a family member or friend. When we do have to go outside, face masks are not easy to find now. But, UCA found a great resource to show you how to make your own mask at Joann Fabrics. Another great source would be to check your local community apps looking for anyone in your area making face masks.
Social Media Apps
Social Media has taken center stage as a way to find local resources and to connect with our family and friends. Finding groups in your local community are easy. Look for neighborhood watches, coronavirus specific local pages or trusted government accounts, first-responder organizations, marketplaces and community groups. Get with a neighbor, a family member or a friend and find preferred social platforms apps to connect so that you can support each other and pool resources to help others.
Follow Unified Caring (UCA) on our website (UnifiedCaring.org), Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn accounts to receive our latest caring sources. Our COVID-19 Pandemic webpage is updated daily with helpful resources and tools, caring stories, and positive news about the pandemic. At UCA, we care about you and your safety.
Community Apps
Discover helpful community apps that help people in local communities source items, ideas and community information. You can become aware of what help is needed – what you can do, buy or share to help your neighbors and community. If we have the means to volunteer to go back and forth to deliver much needed groceries and supplies, that is in high demand in every community right now. Use hashtags in your favorite social media app with your city, village or community name and off you go!
Caregiver Apps
For those that are taking care of the disabled and elderly, we have found some great resources to help you that you may not have heard of yet. Check out the UCA Membership page and click on the Community benefits category. When it comes to caregiving, there is a lot involved and it can be very stressful. With the Caring Village App, you can keep family and loved-ones connected and in the loop about medications and proper administration, along with storing legal and financial documents. Another great app for caregiving is the CareZone App. It is user friendly to help a caregiver with getting medical information, making appointments, storing insurance information and helping loved-ones create to do lists to make sure nothing is missed no matter how distant everyone may be.
Home Schooling
Parents across the U.S. are home with their children homeschooling. This can be a struggle to say the least! Here are some helpful homeschooling apps to consider that can help children with studies.
ABC Mouse: The “Learning at Home” part of ABC Mouse is an online program that helps your child from the ages of 2 to 8 with the overall curriculum of reading, math, science, art and music. It includes games and puzzles, reading and writing.
MathBoard App: To help kids with basic arithmetic skills, check out MathBoard by PalaSoftware. It is a chalkboard setting app. Teachers or parents can assign an agenda for the child. There are solution-based problems to help with them as well.
K-12 Mobile Apps: To help your kids from kindergarten to senior in high school. Students from k-8, this helps with Language Arts with timed Reading and Writing, Practice counting Money-Bills and Coins and Germ Counting which as well would be very beneficial during this Pandemic. Students in High School this App helps with Science/Periodic Table of Elements. It also aids online schooling as well.
Brainscape: This web platform helps teachers and students create smart flash cards. 90% of learning gets lost in studies and books. With Brainscape, flash cards helps breakdown complex concepts into building blocks with comprehensive repetitions for learning. This helps struggling students with their studies to build their learning and confidence.
Cubic frog: An educational mobile games platform that helps kids from all around the world, covering 12 different languages (English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, French, German, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese). This game helps kids with brain development using fun activities to stimulate early childhood cognition and problem solving building fundamental skills to develop positive lifelong learning patterns.
Self-Care is a Priority
Though it is important to help our neighbor and loved-ones in this time, it is also very important to help ourselves and practice some self-care. Making sure we are taking great care of our self is also a priority. Start with getting in touch with feelings and emotions during this pandemic. Reaching out to our friends and loved-ones is mutually healing. The truth is we are all in this together. Share stories, fears, hopes and tricks for staying active. Get inspired by reading others’ and sharing your caring stories. You can submit your caring story on the UCA COVID-19 webpage, as well as read other’s stories.
UCA has great benefits for your self-care. Check that out, too. Dive into a membership for just $15 a month to access self-care support such as free phone counseling, self-care assessments, well-being assessments through HeartMath, as well as meditation, fitness and nutrition programs. If you are in the 45+ age group, mid-life crises just got even more strange; check out UCA”s Midlife NO Crisis tool to help get perspective on what’s happening.
In the Caring Community Store you will find a growing offering of products all relating to caring for self, family and community. Check out Cuccio Salon Brand Yogahh Kit; for a low price of $45 members get milk bath, muscle fitness balm, yoga mat cleaner, calming elixir, balancing lotion, cooling and cleansing wipes. It is a treat-yourself bonanza!
Take a look at a fantastic deal for members on the Blood Pressure Monitors by DrKea. They feature a great user-friendly, hassle-free device with Large Buttons, 90 memory settings, 30 recall functions, with a 365 day manufacturer guarantee. What’s not to love with a low member price of $15.00 for the wrist version or just $22.00 for the upper arm version!
These are just two of the caring items at great member prices in our Caring Community Store.
The bottom line is that to safely network in local communities while most of us are under stay-at-home orders takes innovation, digging for new tools and being on top of well-being (our own and others’ well-being). Stay connected, let people know you care, help others in need while being mindful of personal protection for all. Hopefully, you now have a few more ideas that can help. We’d love to hear your best practices. Just email us at CareTeam@UnifiedCaring.org to share your ideas and story.
We are all being called to do extraordinary things for the collective caring of our families, communities and the world in response to the unique coronavirus pandemic. Whether home bound or providing critical services, everyone is stretched to adapt like never before. All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us. Life is going to require new routines, resilience and compassion. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement to respond to local needs.
Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!