Community Response to Coronavirus

Our Community Response to Coronavirus

Here in EVCC we’ve been proactive in adopting measures that, hopefully, will slow the spread of the coronavirus and minimise its threat. Because we are an international community and have members with friends and relatives in countries hit harder and earlier by this pandemic, we were prompted to take action ahead of the UK government’s response. So we have been assessing risks in each household and to each individual in the community and working with both our care provider, Avalon and our landlords to create as robust a response as we can.

We took the decision straight away to limit our contact with the wider community, all non-essential trips were cancelled, and our friends and families were asked not to visit until further notice. Since taking these measures, the government has published stay at home instructions, and our houses have isolated as all households must. We have amongst us a high proportion of people who would be especially vulnerable to the virus, and we are doing all we can to protect them.

We are motivated not just by the impulse to self-protect but by a sense of civic responsibility as well: we have to give our national health service and the other vital elements of our national infrastructure a fighting chance of dealing with this crisis effectively and minimising its impact.

Indoor workshops are closed, and outside work is limited, so we are having to use our ingenuity to keep everyone busy and motivated: it’s a perfect opportunity to spring clean and the gardens are beginning to need attention. Whilst there is obviously some anxiety, and particular people who need reassurance, the general atmosphere is calm and matter of fact. In many cases it is just those people who one feared would be most unsettled who are setting an example of levelheadedness and unflappability.

It would be foolish to predict our community will come through this crisis unscathed, but we will do our best to ensure that outcome. This new century has already thrown huge challenges at us, but we have emerged from each of them stronger than before. In times like these, we are grateful that we are a Camphill community – one founded on a confidence that each human being is, in essence, an indefatigable spiritual being who passes through sickness and health, good fortune and suffering, life and death always learning, always changing, sometimes impeded but never defeated.