 Welcome to the latest episode of In the World of Winooski. Today we're dedicating time to reflect on the past year of COVID-19 in Vermont, the impacts on Winooski, and what we have learned that will take forward to build back stronger. I'm joined by city manager Jesse Baker, Winooski School District Superintendent, Sean Mannon, and the Executive Director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Amila Mrodzanovic. Last March, oh, thank you all for being here. Last March, I recall just experiencing a lot of uncertainty and confusion as we abruptly made shifts to city operations. I saw, I'd heard about the school operations changing and heard a little bit from you and Amila with USCRI. So I wonder if you could each just spend a moment sharing a bit about those early days and what did you have to do? Like how, what changes did you have to make to adapt? Can I start with you, Sean? Sure. I think what has underlined this whole time and really started in earnest for us that middle of March was the uncertainty. So we had the pandemic starting, we had anxiety rising around very immediate and personal health needs. And then we had kind of state level concerns about overloading the healthcare system as we had seen starting to happen in some other states and even other countries across our globe. And so at the local level, that was very difficult to not have any clear guidance about what we could do. And it basically was then given to the locals to make decisions until that weekend before when the governor made the statement to dismiss schools. But the two weeks leading up to that were really, really difficult because people were just kind of living in a very reactive, very emotional, anxious place. So from a leadership perspective, we were managing human behavior more so than we normally do. And at the same time, we were trying to make plans to move to a model of learning that we were not so familiar with. We had a lot of the infrastructure already in place in terms of laptops and chargers and all that good stuff. But the ability to learn and to teach online was not something that we had done a lot of, we dabbled with. So that kind of typified our early days of those two weeks were something like I've never experienced. And I know people in our organization have never experienced either. And in the end, I'm really proud of our community and the commitment, the pace which would they move, the care with which they moved and keeping students at the center of all that throughout. Thanks, Sean. Amila, your team does a lot of direct service provision with residents in Manuski. Tell us a little bit what that was like. Well, similarly, thank you first for inviting me to take part in this conversation. Similarly to what Sean said, the two weeks leading up to the governor implementing the emergency order and ordering all organizations that our client facing to go into lockdown were very anxiety, very intensive, very, very stressful. As our model, our culture is to be welcoming to our clients, we don't operate, although we should by appointment. We have an open door policy and families come in as their needs arise. Whether it's as for something as simple as looking at the piece of mail that they received or something more substantial. So very quickly, we understood that our whole culture would, in the way we provide services and support our families would shift, would have to shift pretty immediately. And so once we close the office, our work takes place in the community, in people's homes. So very early on, we had to take steps and put in the effort to reach out to as many families as possible and how people understand what were, as much as we understood at that point what we were up against and the immediate impact. And then very, very early on, many families were impacted by layoffs. So our services, and it became thinking back, I'm actually feeling it physically. It was all hands on deck. It did not matter who was, whose job is what at that point, for myself, everyone, we were helping people with unemployment claims and applying for other support services, whether it's food stamps or accessing food, communicating with landlords and employers. And then the big issue of how do we bring the information about this monster that COVID-19 was coronavirus in the culturally and linguistically appropriate manner to various communities. So I will just mention that it was two people, two community members, Alison Seeger and Muhammad Jafar got together very early on and said, let's record a video in Somali and let's put it out via social media. And from there, but that was just one language. And then they pulled other partners in, including Sean and his team and the city and ALV. And what was started by two people is today known as the Vermont Coronavirus Multilingual Task Force. We have a YouTube channel. We have put out 400 plus videos in 14 different languages from everything, A to Z COVID-19 and vaccine. And so our work, our culture shifted and we are still officially closed. The office is closed. We have five staff going in at staggered schedules, but our work has very much continued, all in accordance with safety measures, but our work cannot stop, couldn't stop. Yeah, I mentioned that we have five staff Yeah, you mentioned the Multilingual Task Force and I know that that's been a critical group and getting information out to folks who need it. You and your organization, I have heard about the countless hours that you all spend even on the weekends trying to make sure that things are getting where they need to go. And I know, Sean, yourself, members of your staff, there's just this going above and beyond, you've seen the need to do like food delivery or I know faculty was going to check in at students' homes when they hadn't heard from them. So definitely have seen shifts in what your standard operations may have been before. Jesse, can you talk briefly about what the city had to do to pivot? Sure, thank you for having me and thank you Sean and Amila for being here as well. So the three things that I really think about when I think back to March and our pivot on the municipal side was one teamwork. I remember a night very early on, but right before the state of emergency was declared, huddling over a conference table with Sean and his leadership team and me and my leadership team trying to figure out what was happening. We wouldn't do that today, but it really felt from the beginning like things are changing really fast. We have this very heightened level of anxiety on our teams. We're all in it together. How can we support each other through it? And I think that's always been a strength of this community and I think that really came out in those early days. The second thing from a municipal perspective was regional support. Early in March when we kind of saw something was coming, the managers across Chittenden County met and started to craft plans for if our department went down, if we didn't have a wastewater treatment plant operator in place, how we would share services and basically do that off the books, just figure out who needed what and be there to support them to do it. And then third in March for our pivot was really focusing on our first responders, our emergency, our essential workers, those folks that couldn't go home that needed to be staffing the fire trucks, the police trucks, the ambulances, the wastewater treatment plans required daily testing. Somebody had to come in and do that. So how did we ensure that those folks who were going to continue to be out in the world could do that as safely as possible to ensure the public safety here in Winooski? It is crazy to think that it has been more than a year now and we still have it returned to our previous operations. I wanna go back to, I like what you shared, Jesse, about huddling with the school leadership team at the conference table. And I know that that grew into a weekly check-in with our partner organizations like USCRI, ALV, the Housing Authority, et cetera. And, Jesse, you have done a great job of facilitating those meetings and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that came together and how, through that group and the other huddles that you pulled together, we were able to support during our outbreak in June as testing came out and how we've been able to leverage our partners here in Winooski to get services out. Sure, thank you. So the Winooski, I think one of the things we should acknowledge about how privileged we are in Vermont is to have leaders at all level, especially at the state level who are really data-driven, science-driven and best practice-driven. So in the early days, one of the things that we were encouraged to do was look at the CDC best practices around pandemic response and understand at the community level how we support. And one of their best practices was convening regular check-in times to share resources, check-in times with executives to share resources. So I think, I didn't actually go back and look at this, but I think in the last week of March, we had our first Winooski leadership briefing which brought executives from the city, school, nonprofit partners like Amila, ALV, our big housing partners, our medical providing partners, our faith communities, our business communities, bringing all those executives virtually together to share information, share quick updates, things were changing really fast. And again, really thinking at some point, we might need to share ability. So if one organization's finance department was not able to function, could another organization's finance team step in? That was really kind of the initial goal to share information, ensure that people had the resources they needed and be able to pivot quickly. So we held those weekly for six months, just as a check-in time for leaders to come together and share information. That model really worked and became something that I think is now ingrained in our culture. We were also able to amend it and add in a few more partners when we had the first community spread outbreak in June. So at that point, we started daily, what we called huddles with first thing in the morning with the Vermont Department of Health and our community partners in the school. And again, really use that time to share information, make sure our families were getting the services they needed through people who had the culturally appropriate, linguistically appropriate abilities to do that, made sure they were compensated for doing that work and really were able to very quickly wrap our hands around families who were experiencing trauma and sickness and stem that tide, bend that curve, make sure our community stayed healthy in the future. So really thankful for all those leaders in our community who came together and spent time in those meetings and huddles with us. Yeah, and Sean and Amila, both of you have been there this whole time and I think have done a lot of the advocacy to kind of shift how information or how services were getting out there. So we'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, I'll start Amila if that's all right. Cause I was taking some notes while Jesse was talking and I'm like flowing back to all of these memories in the year that some of them I thought I'd forgotten, but I think that the beginning with the Winooski Leadership Briefing Group that was foundational and genius to do that. Thank you, Jesse. And it was kind of, to me, it was a couple of steps. It was bringing people together, decision makers to communicate and then to prioritize. And it was also a place for leaders to get support from each other. And so that led us to, well, I'll use an example to walk through this. Example would be food security. So what we maybe didn't realize originally in our silos was there was a lot of food resources out there. And so for us to get together to coordinate between all of the Vermont Food Bank, the school district, ALV, USCRI, the Winooski food shelf, we realized like, okay, we're doing okay. Like food security is in pretty good shape. Then we can move on to another challenge to try and meet another need in the community. But the briefing teams then led to having this collaborative trusted group in place. So when we hit June and there was an outbreak, it wasn't relearning. It was, okay, let's get down to business. Let's figure out how we support our community and solve these challenges and support everyone. And then that led to December when the school district was in the middle of it and we had to go to remote learning. We felt very supported by everybody in doing that. That then led to vaccination clinics and this group advocating and bringing in the Department of Health and getting decision makers, policy makers at the table to meet the specific needs of our community really around limited English proficiency folks and BIPOC folks. And I think that has been one of the greatest achievements throughout this by the leaders across our community and all of our partners is those kinds of steps that got us to prioritizing our most vulnerable people who were disproportionately affected by COVID-19. That was so well said. Sean, the couple of things I would like to, I guess, emphasize is the, well, first kudos to you, Jesse, and gratitude for your leadership and for bringing us all together and moving us forward and your advocacy on behalf of all Winooski residents and really all Vermonters, whether it was around access to testing or now the vaccine, it's, you've been an inspiration to say the least. Also what you said, Jesse, about all of us as Vermonters being so privileged and for myself, who came to this country as a refugee being so lucky to end up in Vermont and to have the state leaders who are still listening and hearing what we who are on the ground, community-based organizations, are identifying as needs, as barriers to access services and really implementing our recommendations. So grateful for that. The other really unique sort of, but I'm now hearing it's happening in other states, but I'm gonna say we did it first, even if we didn't, is implementing, it started with testing back in June, implementing testing sites, where, going where people are and doing it in the way that is, it feels welcoming and it feels safe. So doing it in the parking lot, in front of the O'Brien Center, which is where people are familiar with that space and feel safe. And then with the vaccine, once the vaccine rolled out, having it in the locations in both Burlington and Muskie, that feels safe and welcoming. That has made a huge difference. As we know, in some of the refugee communities, there is a lot of myths, not only refugee, this sort of permeates borders. It's not unique to any community group, but there's a lot of myths, a lot of sort of stigma around the virus itself and now the vaccine. So having those, clinics in the place that feels safe and with having it staffed by people who are community members, trusted community members and interpreters has made a huge difference. Amela, what you were just describing about trying to lower these barriers or doing this advocacy through testing through the vaccine clinics, even when it came to the messaging and supporting folks in quarantine, et cetera. I think about coming out of this pandemic and moving forward and I think the leadership briefing, the huddles, the work that's been happening collaboratively is just a really good exemplar of why culturally we are starting to focus on diversity and inclusion and wanting to have more voices involved. Having these meetings with so many different stakeholders there, folks who are actually in touch directly with different members of our community and different families. I've heard so many issues raised that I wouldn't know about otherwise because they're not the things I'm experiencing and just being daily reminded that everyone's experience is different and valid and we need to address all of those. Do the best we can to try to support everybody. I think that I'm feeling a little bit heart one by that, but I wonder if you all wanna share something else that you're thinking about how you're gonna move forward on a very basic level. I've enjoyed having residents being able to call into a city council meeting instead of showing up. I'm sure there are so many other things, so whoever would like to start first. I guess I'll just add. What I'm hoping to hold on to is those relationships. I think we strengthened, we had solid relationships to begin with which allowed us to be a strong community from the beginning, but the depth of them now and the true trust in each other and trust in messages and what we need to do to make our systems more anti-racist to make our systems more equitable is at the foundation now and the relationships and the trust we have in place across our community now to continue to do that work. I feel like we made a huge leap forward in that in the last year and I really look forward to seeing that continue post pandemic and so many other things we could do together. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of you in person. And I echo what you said, Jesse, those relationships will continue beyond this situation. Vermont has been a welcoming state, when Husky has been a welcoming city for refugees for over four decades and this last year has strengthened those relationships even more and has made us all more nimble and able to respond quickly to almost anything that came our way, we found a way to address it and to make sure that our community members are being supported. I will not miss daily 8.30 huddles. Well, yes, completely 100% echo, affirm the relationships that have been built and to continue those deep in them and for the benefit of our communities. The second thing I think that we need to kind of keep the heat on a little bit is what we've learned about. It has revealed a need for a universal approach across our systems, health, education, employment, et cetera, to provide equitable access through interpretation, through translation, through the needs for transportation, bringing things to people and that requires investment. And so much of what we did this year was out of pure human commitments, tireless energy to our community. And if we don't build the system moving forward we will end up in this position again. And so I think all of us as leaders need to continue to advocate for that, for the investment at the state level, at the local level so that we create those universal systems that are gonna provide better access, more timely communication and so forth to the people in our communities that deserve that. That's really well said, Sean. And I think it's making me think about how in the past, maybe we've been less universal and less collaborative, we get sort of held up by the structures that we already have. And only in this like very visible, tangible crisis we move beyond that in some aspects. And it would be easy to let that go as the sort of the urgency falls away. And it is something that we'll have to keep our eyes on. I think that's also a great thing to keep in mind as federal funding is flowing to our state over the course of this year that we should be thinking about like how can we make these systemic change, how can we use this money to make these systemic changes and continue to improve the way we're supporting our residents going forward. I also just wanna recognize the importance of both formal and informal community leaders. I think that's another aspect of this collaborative approach and having many voices is knowing that there are already folks out there who I can't reach everyone in the city and my methods of communication can't reach everyone. So being able to lean on folks that already have those relationships is incredibly valuable. And to Jesse's point earlier, like compensating people for that work, recognizing it, there's just a lot that we can take out of this. So I just really wanna express like deep gratitude to all of you for all of the work that you've been putting in. And I know we'll continue to do. And I think, and this is just a, there's only four of us here, right? There's been so many people involved in carrying when we see through this and know that we will continue to do that. And I look forward to maybe in July-ish seeing folks out and about in town. So thank you so much.