 I'm John Copans. I work for the Council on Rural Development and I am facilitating this session today. And I think Jenna and Commissioner Hanford gave you a feel for what this is about. I want to emphasize that this is really primarily about hearing from you all, what will facilitate a conversation, but the idea is to hear from you all. The topic of this particular session is around community unity and health. So hopefully you've come to the right room. If not, I can help you find. I can give you directions to the, to the, to another virtual room. You know, as we get started in this conversation, one thing that I sort of reflect on is that we are, what is different about this particular, I guess, challenge of COVID-19 is that it's, it's got a different time scale than, than a typical disaster. Right. We think about weather disasters where there's an incident and then there's the response. And this, this doesn't really feel that way. It's sort of this rolling thing. And we all have different experiences as we go through it. And it, there's an ebb and flow to it. And so, you know, as we think a lot about sort of response, recovery and renewal sort of as different phases. And I think the reality of this time is that we're kind of in all of that at the same time, right? We're responding to immediate needs because there's a lot of our monitors really struggling to meet their immediate needs. And so we're in that response phase of making sure people have a roof over their head that they're healthy, that they've got food on the table and those basic needs. There's that response. Then there's the recovery of like, how do we get back to quote unquote normal? And then, and then we think about renewal, which is what does Vermont's future look like? And in fact, does this challenging moment provide some opportunity to create a new future for our communities and our state? So it's sort of, so this conversation, I guess part of why I say that as we get started is I'm giving you all permission, not that I need to, to cover all of that. Don't feel like you're, you should be stuck in like the response mode. It can be interesting to have conversations because some people are really very much living in the day to day. Other people are thinking much further out in terms of where, where the future looks like. And I'm just saying to you all that all of that is important in this conversation. And so don't, don't be shy about, about participating. I want to acknowledge, we have some visiting team members. And I also want to acknowledge we have a scribe here, Elena, Elena, I don't know how to pronounce your last name, maybe you could do it but Elena is taking notes for us. And so I just wanted to let you know like the nice thing for me as a facilitator is we've got someone here whose job sole job is to take notes. It's really helpful because that a lot of this is about gathering input that we will feed into both the task force and the governor's office so thank you Elena for that. And I also want to acknowledge a few visiting team members, which include will ever Lee and Bonnie when when they are from the Regional Planning Commission. And finally, now I'm going to introduce Monique priestly, who is from the space on main over in Bradford, and has some other roles to which she'll share with you I'm, they're so new that I think they don't come off my tongue yet but um, and Monique is actually as we get started Monique's going to share some reflections about the work that's been going on over in Bradford just to kind of get us started, and then I'll start facilitating our conversation. So with that, Monique, take it away. And I apologize I have to, I'm trying to draw the three zooms right now. So, I'm going to go real quick and I'm going to jump off and I'll be back. So I guess. Nick just shared said to share a zillion things so I'm not sure. I guess the main thing would be that I've been involved in kind of Bradford community stuff for this last 10 years now 11 years now. And on different boards and different volunteer capacities. All of which kind of led me to starting a co working space on Main Street in Bradford. And it's really kind of turn into a, not only support for remote workers but support for like organizations that don't have meeting places anywhere and it's like we don't have any accessible and tech oriented meeting spaces that all in our town or area within probably like the, you know the surrounding towns 10 towns. And then also just a kind of a community space where we have things like concerts, or we've had movies or craft fairs. We have a code for UV brigade that's meeting right now to work on some tech projects for local nonprofits, all kinds of stuff. And I would say so that kind of. Meanwhile, I have worked in technology and for software company for the last, the work in technology for last 19 years and we're just left to software company of the last decade of working remotely. And I don't know where I was going with that. But I guess on the side. So that's professionally but all of the stuff outside of those hours has been on community development economic development in a way that I didn't really realize I was jumping into that until I was in it. So I just left and then started working for the Center for Women and Enterprise. And but the community aspects joined the Vermont Council of Rural Development Board and because of COVID and kind of being connected to all the different community groups when and I wasn't here during Irene. So when COVID hit started asking around to public safety and the select board, asking what we were going to do to respond. And really nobody had any plans. So I asked if it would be okay to not step on toes but to jump into that so we started a kind of a mutual aid group I was seeing the stuff that was happening on Facebook coming out of the University of Chicago. And then we stopped up a kind of a mutual aid group which then with concerns of financial stuff and insurance ended up getting the town to take us under that under the town as a formal commission. And so I've been just kind of working with the Vermont Council of Rural Development on all of the community gatherings with all the mutual aid volunteers and it's been amazing to see what's good. There's been three different people who have done calls it's it's not the traditional role. There's a lot more diversity which has been awesome and in all different aspects. And I guess the next thing for Bradford is trying to figure out there's been such great things coming horrible things coming out of COVID but great things coming out of COVID as far as like transparency communication and trying to like figure out. And so we've got great points and we've kind of rallied and trying to keep that going. I guess in the future. John, I don't know what else to say. That's great Monique. Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe a little more of a prompt though about sort of how, how do you feel like just as we get started. As you've pulled that together and Bradford, any, any sort of techniques for pulling sort of a disparate group into a common common conversation there. Yeah. So I think that the big thing there was there was already kind of a little bit of a multi sectoral that was a little bit limited to kind of the, you know, the who's who type behind closed doors type operators. I was part of that kind of group. And so kind of hijacked one of some of those meetings to expand it to be more than just like select board and planning commission and the banks and that kind of stuff to be the libraries and to involve people that were heading up into transportation, housing, the schools, youth sports, the mentoring projects, the health clinics, and just trying to really. So we, I guess my first initial list was 50 people. And for the first few weeks, like most of those people would say 40 of them were joining. It's dwindled down to like 30, sometimes 20. So the group is still continue to meet. And even though COVID isn't in our area necessarily, we're not seeing huge needs for volunteers and food because we stood up a huge volunteer effort of, like, I think it was like 120 people when we posted our form, which those people would never have never seen them volunteer. So it was, it was crazy to see that and then we put a whole kind of structure in place that where we had I had like 10 team leads that would have like 10 people each and some overflow. And we were meeting weekly to kind of coordinate any efforts that came in. I use a lot of my software background to stand up like support ticket systems to the funnel support requests needs for requests for help. And even we still are meeting every other week for the kind of the Bradford resilience group. And even though there's not necessarily a lot of needs going on. It's the first, like, I would say it's the first ongoing kind of like space that people from all these sectors are still listening to each other. They're still joining the call. They're still new people are sharing like that librarian is sharing things that I'm sure majority of the group has never really kept tabs on the same with the select board. So it's been, they've all each week I asked you like do we still need to meet every other week or should we change it to less but each week they still want to keep doing it because it's really the only forum that they've come all come together in one spot to support each other. So I'm hopeful that that will keep going. That's great. Super. Thanks Monique. And I know you have to juggle so feel free. So our, I want to just kind of go over quickly our agenda so you all know know what to expect here so again, sort of the theme for this conversation is around community unity and health. And, and I would, I would use think of those terms as broadly and as flexibly as you want like nothing, nothing is off limits in this conversation. And I think what we'll do is we'll open up thinking about what are some challenges in that area. And maybe those are challenges given the current circumstances and the pandemic or maybe those are more long, long range challenges. What do you want for your community in that area is the second second agenda item. Are there promising practices strategies or programs emerging around this topic area. And then what are your ideas for additional action that's needed locally regionally, or at the statewide level that addresses the challenges and works towards accessible and equitable recovery and renewal. And then finally at the very end of the conversation I'm going to give a chance for our visiting team will and Bonnie and Monique to share a few reflections as we bring things to a close and Elena to if you if you want, I'll give you the option as well. So, so with that, as we think about community unity and what and health in in in central Vermont, let's say. What do you feel like are some obstacles what's holding you back what are some challenges in this area. And, and let me just say in terms of a facilitator, feel free we're a small enough group that if you just want to kind of unmute that I can just kind of cue off of that like Denise I think I saw you maybe getting ready to speak there. Feel free to wave your hand at me if you want to speak. Oh, maybe not. I had to have had to get on my phone instead of my computer. Oh, I got you. So, anyone who wants to speak just kind of unmute and you can kind of wave to me or if you feel the need to sort of raise your hand there's a way to do that as well in in zoom but I don't think we'll have to do that. So, what are some, what are some challenges in terms of community unity and health. I'll go ahead. My name's Ray live in Plainfield, and I think from kind of a health perspective. I mean because it's not that services necessarily aren't available but people who may have underlying health conditions like I don't think things are as resources aren't as accessible. So I think people are not taking like people are needing to deal with the immediate. And so, being able to, I mean just overall deal with anxiety, especially if it's new for people, and then people with underlying health conditions like doing prevention screenings and it's just kind of falling by the, by the wayside for some people so I think there's just not a ability to be potentially as proactive about one's health overall and then there's this the whole element of anxiety and especially around youth and what is really happening with youth, what's happening in the even just starting in the schools my husband's a teacher. And just how traumatic it is for for the students right now, and then kind of community, you know everything is connected to health ultimately, but racism. Just the divisiveness. And I'll leave it at that. Great. And those were really three distinct things sort of accessing care, especially sort of care that's more proactive youth and the challenges they're facing in particular, and then racism in general those sort of three distinct. Great. Others, what are some, what are some challenges or obstacles right now to unity and health. Yeah. Alice. Hi, I'm Alice peel from weights field. I'm on the weights for planning commission. And I also am a member of the transportation advisory committee of the mad river planning district. Um, weights field in particular, I'll speak to one thing that happened. We went through a very contentious two weeks when the select boards were looking at issuing their own mandates for where face masks. In terms of going out shopping, etc. The towns of Warren and faced in, which border us their select boards issued a mandate that face masks were required in the towns. And then we got to weights field. And I happened to be at the meeting of the weights field select board for another for more of a planning commission update and weights field kind of blew up into a very contentious battle. The select board voted down three members voted down. A face mask mandate mandate. And what happened in the meeting was, I happen to be there. And a few, one of the select board chairperson does solicit comments from, you know, from members from non members who were there. And it was very distressing to a number of us who cited our particular compromised health situations and how this worried us. So, two weeks into this. The select board came back again, and had it. Well, I guess it was a week later, they called a special meeting on mandating face masks and this was all before the governor issued the statewide mandate. And what happened in the meeting was a lot of anti vaxxers anti max face mask wearers, specific medical professionals, specific scientists who gave, you know, real co vet coven data, and it was a contentious crazy meeting with a lot of follow up in the front porch forum that got nasty contentious politically charged. And then the governor issued his mask mandate. And that all kind of went beside the wayside, but I see more of a healing thing that happened from that from that contentious meeting came a group that is put together a group called mad mad cares, meaning the mad river valley and what they're doing now, our webinars and programs on mad river valley television. To give people advertising give people medical professional information, allow questions, talk about things that the towns have done well and are going well. We have a lot of questions about the schools. Our big hot topic right now and our point of fear and tension would be the schools, but this small group came together and realize that they needed to do it from those contentious meetings. We're going to see signs pop up people saying gee you really got to listen to this. So, they've done their first one and I think they're going to try and continue doing these sessions. And I think that it's out of something that was really divisive has become kind of a healing and a forum for people to be able to tell their personal stories. To get public health professionals and doctors and nurses and business people, people who own restaurants to get their perspective on their fears and needs. So, that's one thing I wanted to talk about. Thanks Alice that's a that's a power and powerful narrative with some powerful and some encouraging points. Thank you. Others, some, some challenges or obstacles that we face right now. Denise. Um, so I'm in Northfield and I'm a board member of serve the community emergency relief volunteers and we operate the food shelf and the clothing shelf in town. And, you know, like, I'm guessing everywhere else we've seen an increase in usage of our food shelf. And we've been able to accommodate that we we've had a lot of generous donations from community members and some grants and other things that have kept us going. But our, one of our big things now is as the weather gets colder because we have a very small facility and we actually had to move operations outside to deliver food to clients when they came to pick it up. There's not enough room in our food shelf for, you know, multiple volunteers and people coming in to keep safe distance. So we ended up having canopies and boxing food into, you know, people could come up and go through and get it that way. So, kind of an immediate challenge that I see for us is what we're going to do going into the winter, and we're still trying to figure that out. You know, whether or not we'll be able to continue doing that outside or finding another facility doesn't seem very practical, but we know that that food need will continue and possibly grow in the winter like it often does in the winter. So that's just a challenge for us at this point. Got it. Thank you. Others, Rebecca, was that a little wave, Rebecca help. I wasn't waiting, but I'm a nurse practitioner I live in Montpelier and I'm doing telemedicine and an opiate treatment program in the state. I moved up here a couple months ago actually from Bennington so my clients are still in the Bennington area but I know this pertains what I have to say to patients in this similar circumstances in central and northern Vermont. I agree with Denise. I'm very concerned about many of our patients who remain homeless as we go into September. The other thing I'm finding is that, and this is true nationally many of our patients have relapsed or we're getting more and more new patients in. And it's very difficult to get people into residential now. In residential centers in Vermont understandably have cut down on the number of beds so that there's some more, you know, there's attention to distancing, but that means longer waits. Also they're requiring also understandably that patients get a COVID test. It has to be done a week before their admission, but they're telling us it's probably going to be a two week wait to just coordinating all of that. It's been really challenging and then added to that many of our patients are not linked or not well linked with primary care providers and so many of them are, if they're taking new patients at all it can be three months, six months wait. So it's a lot. You know, you can't see these patients without trying to provide some sort of comprehensive care, but the organization that I work for is not set up to do primary care. And at, you know, there are days where I feel like I'm having the same frustrating conversations over and over and over and we're just sort of bandating and, you know, trying to keep people going another week at this point. Thank you. Others other other obstacles or challenges. Susan. Hi there. Yeah, thank you for holding this forum and for letting us have a chance to talk. I'm the program coordinator for a small man train program in Cabot, and our, our main obstacle has been the social distancing because we're program that almost exclusively focuses on one to one in person time. For youth and adults to help the kids develop social skills to help them develop confidence. And there just isn't any substitute for being in person. And I there is no solution for that and it's just been really frustrating for us. And on top of that, most of our mentors are older. So even when you know we're starting to open up and have a little bit more contact with each other. Our mentors just can't afford to do that yet. So again, there's there's not really any easy solutions for our little program we're kind of in stasis but just sort of expressing my frustration at the state of the world today. Yeah. Thank you. That's appreciate that. Jim vaults. Hi, thanks for holding this thing. I think it's very, very helpful. I'm a select board member in playing field and one of the, I think positive things that's going on right now is zoom. We're holding our select board meetings on zoom just like we're doing tonight with this event. And I think the amount of participation we're getting is really quite high. And that's been a positive thing, I think, when before this before we had the pandemic and we had our select board meetings, very few people would show up, maybe one or two. But now it seems that many more people seem interested and they use zoom and zoom has turned out to be a very positive resource to have and I think that that's been a real benefit. Thanks. That's, that's helpful. Let me ask you just one quick follow up just out of curiosity. Maybe others are curious too so when you have more participation do you. Are you able to engage them in terms of like is there a public comment period, or do you engage them on particular questions that are on the agenda how are you managing participation via zoom are there. Does it, is it, is it workable. Yeah, it seems to be, I mean, people raise their hand we ask if anybody wants to comment at different times during the meetings. There's a specific time on the agenda for public comments but we don't hold people to that timeframe we usually allow anybody who wants to speak to speak when they want to for the most part. One of the most well attended meetings unfortunately was because of for a negative reason but they, but it still had tremendous turnout and people spoke up and I thought that that the fact that they did that and they were willing to participate was a positive thing. So I just wanted to give a shout out to zoom and and using zoom seems to be a very helpful thing at this time. And if I could, if I could just follow up with what he said zoom meetings are, I do find we do find the same thing, both with the planning commission and with the select board, and the development review board. More people show up more people watch so that I think more information that people are finally you know, what are these people actually do. And we have it in two places they can zoom in, or our local television station, MRV TV will also broadcast it on the channel, different local government groups. One of the things that was very important was we have been trying for a long time to connect more thoroughly, the planning commission, and our conservation commission, and the zoom meeting with the planning commission for conservation commission worked because we had 100% attendance of both commissions within the meeting room. It would have been, we would have needed an auditorium. So it does zoom, we find it works quite well. Thanks Alice. I see Allison with a hand there. I think Michael might have been before me, so I'll see the floor. Ladies, you're good. Thanks. I'm Alison Smith I'm with UVM extension for each previous to my current position I was the Washington County educator, I am filling in for Molly McFawn who's the current educator in this county. But yeah, I think one challenge that's on our mind right now is just this idea that there's the potential for widening the opportunity gap among our youth, and as we are figuring out how we deliver continue to deliver our programs. And even expand our reach within the county and youth across the state of Vermont. How do we offer various delivery modes, and speaking to Susan's point, a lot of our volunteers currently are in a population that are a little bit more weary of getting back together with youth even as we're able to also do that so that's a challenge for us for And then to echo what Ray said about mental health and trauma among youth and how do we connect, how do we continue to connect people intergenerationally right now I think is really important so that you feel supported but also that you know our older folks to feel like they still have connection with the youth in their communities because that's been something really central to 4h and and I see that being lost a little bit right now. Great. Thanks Alison. Michael. Right. Good evening everyone. Mike Rama, I am representing Downstreet Housing Community Development, and I am also a resident of Northfield. So to, I've got to two pain areas or problematic problematic areas. One, I'm sure you've all thought about and that's the mental health of our neighbors and isolation. And I'm particularly thinking of those who are, you know, deemed most vulnerable at this time. And I'll share. Boy, it was about mid April, and I was a colleague of an associate at Capstone Community Action mentioned that they reached out to about 120 seniors. Like touch base and like how are you doing and food, you know, what do you need for food. And they reported that majority of those seniors so well over 100. That was the first outreach they had got and received, and that was a month into the shutdown. I think that just paints a really bright picture that we've got a lot of gaps in terms of connection within our community for a lot of our neighbors who are living alone. So I think that's it. It's an essential area especially and Rebecca mentioned that we're heading into winter, which forget about going outside. So I think that's a big piece. And another one that's been on my mind since the get go of all this is and it's not probably just on the county level. I mean, I think you can run up the flagpole on a national level to but there's been a lot of chatter and suggestions about wearing face masks and and physically distancing, which is great. But there hasn't been a lot of chatter about how do you boost your immune system during a state of, of, you know, a respiratory and health crisis, you know, take vitamin D and try to get your heart pumping a little bit for as much as you can do in a day and so I think there can be more guidance, particularly from a state level on that to just give people some more tips on how to boost the best defense they have against this thing which is their very own immune system, which, you know, it's kind of like a muscle you got to work at it. So I think those are two areas of problems but also opportunities. Thanks John. Thanks Mike. All right, I'm going to actually shift gears a bit and now and feel free if if if I'm skipping over you and you want to come back to that. The obstacles piece feel free to but how about what what might a vision be in these areas in terms of like what does. Things are working well in terms of community unity unity and health. What what does that vision look like for you all. And maybe I can prompt I mean to some degree, your challenges I think the challenges are articulate sort of where some of the potential is so you know Mike what you just said about people in isolation. It seems to me that communities where people are connected to each other, whether that's connected to neighbors, or other caregivers, or others in their community who are sort of looking out for them. I would imagine something that we are all holding right now is how are we. What is that interconnectedness what is that sort of web that that makes sure that no one falls falls through the cracks and that when people are in need that that that need is is being met by by others in the community. Add on to that. The word that comes to mind is matchmaking and it's not it's not the best word it's just like how there's so many people that have. So many people that have different resources like so say you take kids, but the only people who can support kids right now are like within the school system but there's a lot of people who could be supporting kids in other ways that's not through necessarily the school system or you take people supporting people with, you know, immunity boosting or anxiety or, and they may not be in the health profession but they're available to offer supports like how do we match some of these people because it's not just, you know, elderly folks that are that are alone and living alone there's a lot of people who are alone who haven't been these communities and don't have a network of people and if they're not in a really robust community where there's a lot of free flowing information. I mean, I'm planning as an example for me is, is how do you really connect with people without putting something out on French port front porch forum that's like I need this or I offer this like something that's more integrated about being able to kind of match deliberate and intentional relationship building a kind of across the place and then how does that ultimately help with this kind of this political divisiveness of being able to to be friends and engage with people who are not in your immediate pod of like minded kind of folks so I don't not a solution but but building on that it's something that's that's that's organized and accessible. I can. Can you hear me. Yeah loud and clear go for it. Okay, great. This is Almy Landauer and the library director in Waterbury, and I'll just offer something that we did in this town in response to the previous comments. Towards the beginning of coven we we put together a group, like one of our earlier speakers from I think it was. Was it brand Bradford. We put together a group, you know called waterbury coven, and we have conference calls to start every week and every other week, etc. One of our projects was to put together something called waterbury cares and it was exactly what the previous person was talking about we created a Google form and also a paper version of it that we tried to distribute although that was challenging for people to sign up if they wanted to volunteer to help folks in their town who in our town who needed some needed some support, whether it was doing grocery shopping, picking up prescriptions from the pharmacy, cutting somebody's lawn, just doing phone call check-ins maybe help with childcare. We had a whole list of things and then a sort of an other, you know, what other needs do you have. And on the flip side, we had the same kind of questions for people who, well, so we had that we had the questions for people who needed the assistance and questions for people who could offer some assistance. And, and then we, we dumped those call the data into a Google sheet spreadsheet. And, and I was one of the I am one of the people who do the matchmaking so we check it every day. If we have a request for assistance we match them up with somebody. We either connect them with phone or email and then they sort of take it from there. And we've, we had well over 100, close to 120 people over the course of the last five, six months volunteering to help. We've had many less than that asking for help. But the ones that we did match up it seemed to have worked really well and I, we haven't been doing a lot of follow up yet with, you know, fun, having any statistics about this relationship end up being ongoing and those kinds of things. But from the feedback that I have gotten and what I do know it has been pretty successful. It very much, you know, dwindled as the months went on and we weren't sure what we were hoping was that that was because a lot of people were already getting help from friends and neighbors in the community. So we didn't need to reach out to this sort of more anonymous, if you will, offer. So, so just, I, we're not certainly not the only community doing that we got the idea from somebody else. So the resources are out there to share and and if any community is is interested in getting it set up there's there's already materials you have to start from scratch. And I don't know how to mute myself again I'm on my phone is it still star six. You know, I don't know that but I have the power to mute so I'll go ahead. Others articulate and and this, this can merge with a little bit with some of our other agenda items here which is, you know what's the vision and and what are some ideas for for addressing community unity, and and community for the health of individuals in the community. Hi, go for it. I'm in Barry, and a group of people got together and called themselves very mutual aid. In March, and we found a website, recovers.org that watery actually used during Irene. It's not perfect. And then we found that there were a lot of people who didn't have internet. And so we got a telephone number. And what the person from library said happened has happened with us. There are still people who are grocery shopping for elders or people without cars with single parents with little kids. We have one time calls. And all we look through are the database that we've collected through recovers and try to find the volunteers that might be a good match or are available. We started doing monthly service to people who can use the veggie dango. We've helped people with just a long list of things we don't, we haven't been doing online and we don't have money. Sometimes people have just needed somebody to talk over their issues or their problems with and help them locate the correct resources, or where do we get paperwork to file our taxes. So it's been extremely varied. And we've served people from Middlesex, Williamstown, Berry City, Berrytown, Berlin. It really doesn't matter because we're mostly on the phone. And then volunteers through the in-person services. And so I'm really excited that the outcome of this for me has been that people have long-term relationships with other people in a part of the community that they would never have connected. I just wish that there was a way that we were more like at the library or that our city council had taken us more under wing as a, making it easy for people to find. But we get referrals from the Family Center of Washington County, from the Council on Aging, 211 has us listed. So I find that being really terrific. And as people are getting busy or going back to work, there are maybe fewer volunteers, but we're also not getting calls five days a week anymore either. So that's just, that's why I came on this call, because for me, it is about having community. And then Berry, I don't know what it is about Berry, but Berry had so many groups of people, immigrants coming to work in the granite industry. And I think that may be a part of why there are all these, there are all the clubs, you know, the Canadian Club, the Mutua, the Elks, the Rotary. And so all those people have also taken on jobs in the city. The Rotary Club's been doing cleanup and helping the gardening center, the Garden Club to do gardening. And so there are things that sort of have fallen by the wayside that the clubs seem to have picked up, but there's not a unifying place for everybody to get together and umbrella. And that's something that would be nice to have without us all having to be personally, I get really tired from the meetings there because of my brain. It's hard for me to stay attending for a long time. So that's why I'm just using my phone. It's easier for me like this. So that's what I'd like to see more of. And one thing I've noticed is that I've been getting more calls from people who have, who have case managers from one agency or another. And something has fallen through the cracks and they find out about us. And so we do what we can to help meet people's needs. And it allows us to work outside the box. And someone from the Council on Aging said it was really great because we're able to do things that they can't do. So anyhow, I just wanted to say that I like what Waterbury is doing. I lived in Waterbury for 25 years. So I like Waterbury also. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you sharing that. You know, it's kind of fun if we think about the geography of Washington County, how many towns we have in this group right here. I feel like I've heard seven or eight different communities in Washington County. I'm kind of impressed with that. It's kind of neat. Other, are there other, as we think about sort of the future and and how we strengthen our communities at this time and moving forward, and how we look after each other's health. Are there other sort of best practices that or ideas that that you all might want to share. Monique. Yeah, um, and this was for the tiles of all move around. Susan socks. So our just met with the other day with our mentoring project for the Upper Valley, and they were struggling with the exact same thing like they, they're not sure whether or not to let mentors and mentees in the same car. If they can't and how do they communicate with each other. How do they have any sense of like unity with the whole organization because they usually do like fun projects together and stuff like that. I don't know if this is helpful. Um, but I kind of offered to them to do like a, I don't know, I guess the brainstorm ideas on how to connect virtually and to facilitate those connections and I'm doing like a, I don't know, probably like an hour or something training with them. And if I don't even know what that looks like yet. So, but it was helpful I could share a record. I guess I'm going to do it in person, but I can still record it. But things like, I mean, most of them didn't realize how many different virtual experiences there are. So one suggestion I'm going to make to them is like trying to put together like here's your virtual safaris and your virtual concerts and your virtual like movies and because there's tons of stuff all the time I think I just signed up one for one from the girl scouts that's got like a million people signed up for it and it's a virtual safari through after like through African plans. So and they just weren't aware of that kind of stuff and then they weren't sure how their mentors would connect to that kind of thing and be aware of it. And then I brought up having probably like I think the easiest thing would be to do like a Google free Google server forum where like if I knew the address I could say up the safaris coming up you guys should all sign up or the kids could say hey we want to attend this or whatever or mentors could say I'm going to sign into this concert. If anybody wants to join me and and then have some kind of thing like a discord which really allows people to jump in and out of voice. It's kind of like a, it's like old Yahoo or MS chat like chat rooms basically you can easily jump in and out of voice channels, so that if they're joining the same concert together they could also jump on that and be able to talk to each other. I don't know if any of that helps but I'm totally happy to help brainstorm if that's helpful and I can totally share what whatever they end up flashing onto. I would just like to say this is Almy again from the waterbury library. That's a great idea and I would just like to say I would really encourage you to partner with your local library on that because I mean our whole business is about sharing information and resources. And so I know our on our library's website we have tried, you know, over the last five, six months we have tried to add all kinds of resources for parents and families and just people who wanted. And of course it's all virtual, but people who you know might be interested in various kinds of programs and online museum tours and all the kinds of things that you're talking about so the library potentially could be a central location for people to go to to find those. Those links and those resources that you're trying to share. Great. Thank you. Susan. Yes. Yeah, thank you Monique. I would actually be very interested in a recording of that and to get connected with you outside this meeting. So thank you. Yeah. Are there others. So on the topic of health. Like, when we mean are there issues of access I mean think about how Ray, I guess you started started us all with that question. There, there's, there are more barriers to access at this point. The barriers can be sort of physical around transportation. They can be around cost. They can just be around availability. I don't know I'm just wondering as you think about where are there, where's the room for improvement on the health front in terms of people's access to great care. What do folks think about that. My experience is that probably the biggest barrier is the availability primary care providers are are leaving. I think it was an article I think it was in the times sometime this week, because it's just proven to be so difficult and so stressful, particularly if they're in an older age category. This has been the thing that's really in their minds forced them to retire. I don't know what it's like primary care here with with moving here a couple months ago I did call a primary care group and stow. And I got what I, you know the answer that I expected which is thought the paperwork if nothing is really pressing with your health that I'm lucky that it's not. It's not your paperwork, but we have absolutely no idea when we'll be able to bring you in and actually meet you. So, I don't know. I don't have any answers about increasing access in terms of the availability piece. Down in Bennington as they say those are the patients I'm still working with, they're going to urgent care and the ER for things that, you know, and those two places should not be seeing ankle sprains and sore I don't know what it's like in Montpelier if it's the same. I think it's quite a huge problem around remind probably around most places in the country right now primary care access. It's a coordination efforts. So, when, you know when, when different volunteers and people in the communities are the ones that are holding the space for say the mutual aid pieces and this is what I was trying to kind of get at before I think an immediate response to like the immediate needs right now it's it's an it's a coordination of resources that goes beyond just what's happening in in one town and then you know that links in with with money and you know how can the information be communicated in a way that is accessible to the people receiving it so people who really need help are I think being able to for some part find that help or make a phone call but there's so many people that need help that don't necessarily it's not immediate immediate need and it's not easily available it's there's not you know it takes money to create a website and then who's going to be able to create that that can coalesce all of the information and all the resources in a way that is easy to to reach and reach out and understand and I'm not not talking about kind of two on one with that immediate piece it's just this this coordination between communities because everything is there's a lot of kind of insular in in the different communities and it sees something like vcrd like how how is there how is there more statewide weaving especially now that technology is going to continue to move and improve so that there there is kind of this more collective approach to being able to tap in tap out in a way that's coordinated across communities and that doesn't have to just be that can build upon the kind of the small the mutual aid pieces that have started in different places and like get to a place like what Alice was saying and her her story you know to barely be able to bring people together with conversations and holding space for kind of not the immediate needs but these bigger this bigger information sharing and it's it's shared resources and it's it's difficult when there's multiple nonprofits multiple organizations, limited money pools and so many different efforts working not and not unintentionally not intentional together there's there's just a lot of different small coordinated efforts how can that be made to be a more robust statewide coordination you know that kind of moves outside of each town and spreads to the county and and it just takes a lot of resources and and being able to ultimately communicate the information in the way that people receive the information there's a lot of resources available but people don't know about it and it's and it's not because it's not anyone's fault it's it's just that that communication kind of mechanism hasn't really wasn't wasn't in place before COVID and so how can this be kind of the opportunity to really have any it exists in multiple industries and how can this be an opportunity to to to build that you know when the organizations kind of merge and become more than one and and just kind of a bigger framework to be able to to meet meet more than the immediate needs but kind of this long term needs that people are going to need in this changing time. Great. Thank you. I think, I think Ray you make a really good point here. One of the things we also saw here in the Mad River Valley so we're really I'm weights field but if you think of the Mad River Valley. There are three towns that cooperate with each other for resources. And we decided the select boards decided on one emergency manager coordinator. The other thing was tensions and potential pitfalls in small groups that you know are very. They had the best intentions at heart, but they also need guidance from the state from the Department of Mental Health, from the Department of Health, and from the Department of Mental Health and the local emergency coordinator to make sure that what they're doing also was following safe practices and having people understand that we didn't really need 200 volunteers right off the bat. What they needed to do is get a list of volunteers coordinate that with the emergency manager, who was quite good and then be able to distribute services and kinds of services like, you know, do we need transportation do we need. He coordinated out there with his wife, getting food delivered. And we knew the services that already existed here that he could then contact and say, here's my new list of who needs this, who needs rides to doctors appointments. And coordinate that because we do have our own senior and resident dedicated car for doctors trips. But what we found was, if there are a lot of little road groups going on that didn't know about each other. Not only were you just duplicating services, but on top of that were you following safe practices in a pandemic. So we kept trying to funnel it to one source. And it didn't didn't work also. One of the things that was very good about the mad care group as they started their education series is they invited a public health council, local nurses and practitioners, business owners, especially restaurants, and their challenges, and they invited to students from Harwood University, Harwood High School to discuss what their concerns were about COVID and going back to school. And they're remote. What it was like trying to be remote and there's a lot of need I think for education on technology and remote learning sources that the schools are going to be challenged to do. So yeah, take a lot of state aid. Yeah. Every now and then, you know, we go through the exercise of trying to mapping all of the various sort of organizations, and the geography that they cover. And your head, it starts spinning really quickly when you think about school districts and all of the different layers and complexity of trying to organize with with all of those different layers and how do we impose. How do we respect that and honor that while also imposing some order. It's a conundrum, I think. So, but yeah, it's important. So I'm also concerned about people who don't use technology and how they get information because it seems like we talk kind of talk a lot about the technology piece. But there is a group of people who who are going to, who are going to be in that kind of mode, whether it's they don't, they're older and they aren't going to learn to use a computer they don't have good broadband access. I'm concerned about how we reach those people with information about resources in some way that's comprehensive enough and current information. And I think that's where maybe a larger, like, I mean, a municipality or the state could play a role in helping spread the word whether it's just even something as simple as some kind of a mailing to everyone about 211. That's probably a service that people are unfamiliar with that that a lot of times could be a solution for them if they just even had access to calling the 211 help line and getting and being able to connect with someone there then to get there to go into whatever other organization or agency that needs to address their actual issues so I don't quite know the answer to it but again I just think that that's a population that we need to remember still exist out there and it's going to be with us for quite a while. Yeah. I was going to say I think during the COVID thing when we had like the mutual aid calls I think a lot of towns tried to do that like for Bradford I put together a basically like a one page letter that had like 211, the super basic mental health and and medical health resources, food shelf hours and then we have like a web page on our time website that just has all the other like everything else we could think of. It's not very expensive but I don't know in the in the interim of the state doing anything like that. I know us and pretty much every surrounding town ended up doing something similar. We put extra copies at the town offices, the libraries and the at the supermarket. So we just did a yard signs. I don't that actually ended up working out pretty well, which I think Catherine Sims it started. So we just did a yard signs with a phone number and website on it around town just saying like if you need help. Here's where you contact and that ended up being the source of most of our volunteer needs requests. It's amazing the power of yard signs. A lot of you get a lot of people who just find them visual clutter but we organize something in Middlebury around energy and like there was a lawn sign that was part of it that that showed your participation. And man that just like people were excited to put those lawn signs up in the yard and it was a way to build some, some like visibility and momentum around around things. So what are some other, Mike, go for it. Yes, sorry. I just, I wanted to kind of respond to kind of the dialogue around a lot of great work happening but kind of siloed a little bit. So I don't know those who were familiar or have heard the acronym when knock rock. It was an effort that happened that spawned in March. It was a consortium effort of, you know, 15 different nonprofit organizations and, and also Department of Health, as well Joe Marie was involved deeply in that effort. I, one thing that we, I mean we formed to try to like mitigate any of those gaps for vulnerable populations right and like to mitigate the hospital surge and give support and mobilize volunteers for the state wherever needed and also help on a local level. So two things I just wanted to share on that front. Like, one thing we learned through it and I think got a good idea at the end towards the end is like on a local level mutual aid groups and volunteer groups like they stood up and totally were awesome. And I think we all went into it thinking we'd have to like really get hands, you know, and boots on the ground but they, they smashed it. And on our end, where we ended up creating towards the towards the end of kind of the spring surge was just a bringing all or as many of the mutual aid groups as we could get contacts to together. And we got a lot of good feedback about that because otherwise they didn't have that medium to connect and discuss what's happening what's working, what are what are your tips of how to solve this problem. So that that connection piece, whoever might be is essential moving forward if we have another surge, or just for another community response scenario. And the other piece I wanted to mention, which I'm now drawing a blank on, because that's how that happens at 751 at night. It might come back to me. So I'll, I'll raise my hand if it does. All right, if it does. So we've got about five minutes left before I'm going to turn it over to our visiting team to share some reflections. And so I want to at this point, there's been a few folks who are pretty quiet on here and that's totally okay but I want to pause a second and for those who haven't spoken you might have some reflections you want to share so if anyone wants to do that. Go for it. Joan Marie. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. My name is Joan Marie Mycic I'm with the Vermont Department of Health and the district director for the Barry just which covers all of Washington County and five towns in Northeast Orange County. I'm also on the board of trustees for Central Vermont Medical Center. And I'm a resident of Marshfield. So it's great to see neighbors. And I, the role I've taken tonight is really just to listen. It's an incredible opportunity to hear, you know, what's alive on the ground in communities so really appreciated everyone sharing and I've been taking lots of notes and have some things that I feel inspired to follow up on or to forward your message and to bring that to my organization. So thanks for sharing. I do also want to, I would be remiss if I didn't put in a plug for an initiative called Thrive. You may or may not have heard of it. Central Vermont's accountable community for health. There are about there are about 50 members representing 3040 maybe 50 different organizations and service providers from the region. And we welcome everyone from you know if you're with an organization but also just a community member. We have had to, you know, rethink how we're doing things during COVID because we used to meet in person monthly. But what was happening the conversation that's been happening tonight reminds me a lot of what Thrive was originally created for which is to coordinate, communicate and collaborate. And so much of what I mean the theme that I'm hearing from a lot of you is that there's a need for that. And for there to be a, you know, a convening of all of what you're expressing and the matching up of the needs and the resources. And so one of the things, one of the things that I wanted to follow up with is perhaps getting a list of the attendees of this event tonight from all of the breakout groups and extending an invitation to everyone to join us with join Thrive. I'll leave it at that because I know coming up on time. Thank you very much. Thanks, Joan and do follow up with us because we usually do send a follow up message to everyone who's participated so we can include that. Are there others who want to chime in. As we look to wrap things up. All right. It's like how long can we go with the awkward silence it's Well, this is Jim Bolz I'd chime in. There we go. Hey Jim. Hi, I just want to, I just want to thank you for doing this event I thought it was really useful and I really appreciated all the comments that everybody made. And I thought many of them were very helpful and and enlightening and so I just want to thank you and everyone who participated. Thank you. Well, let's at this point, I'm going to call on our, our visiting team to share some reflections. Will and Bonnie have been so patient, you know where our visiting team is under some pretty strict direction to be listeners and look, they've, they've done, done well in that department so will how about if you go first if you're up for it. Thank you, John. Thank you. Just a couple of shout outs to start. Obviously, be remiss not mentioning the phenomenal leadership from VH in a time of pandemic so thank you so much Joe Marie and Debbie sang when Eddie and all of VDH. Additionally, I see some representation from the north field mutual aid group as well as serve and just various, you know, down street of course in the building so thank you, Mike. I'm not going to crack thrive, etc. Great to see so many friendly faces. So we're talking about unity and we're talking about health. And the thing that's really occurring to me more than anything is that we've created a lot of ways to provide help during the pandemic, but we have really made as much gain as I'd like to see on the ease of just asking for help itself, the destigmatization of the active a person saying you know what things are really bad and I really have gotten to the point where I do actually need to reach out. It's a small story to reinforce that that is particularly poignant for me. So, you know, in my position within ahs I'm often called with these seemingly hopeless situations where things have gotten incredibly bad and people don't really know what to do. So, you know, recently during the pandemic, and generally the case was that a single mother had a home, which was on the precipice of going to tax sale, and I got this email on a Tuesday, and the tax sale was going to be on a Thursday, in fact, two days after that same Tuesday. The person didn't reach out when they owed $1,000 they didn't owe you know $2,000 when they reached out they didn't reach out when it was three. They reached out when their home was going to tax sale, and they had two days left, and that is not at all an outlier type of situation so I just wanted to kind of reinforce for the community. And you know affiliations and members of this call that as much as it's critical that we continue to convene resources to planfully tie them together to avoid duplication to target gaps. It's also in my mind equally critical that we normalize the prospect of just asking for help making it acceptable to say that you know that that is something that anybody could need at any point and that is totally okay. So kind of following that riff a little bit more. This is a moment in time where I think it behooves us to really focus super locally. So we've talked about the role of mutual aid groups. I think there are a lot of people in our communities who are particularly vulnerable in this moment in time, and it's very powerful for those among us who have some, you know, political capital resources connection to large networks, etc. So we really look out for people in our midst to not only have things like tax sales looming on them but may not have you know winter clothes or food or just even very basic things. That said, when we talk about unity, it occurs to me that for some this has become a polarizing time where there's sort of this fractious view of the pandemic itself and what the response should be and what the role of people should be. And really the opportunity before us is to rally as communities and really ensure that everybody in our midst has not just the basic elements of survival, but a real opportunity to thrive and to have a healthy and happy life. So, without the final thing I'll say is on the health front. While there are tremendous obstacles, we've also seen tremendous innovation in this time of pandemic. We had a shift from many many households around the state being homeless and very precariously housed to a situation where as we de aggregated the shelters and needed to spread to reduce the spread of the pandemic, we were able to provide emergency shelter actually to basically every homeless individual and household and entire state instantly. So that goal of ending homelessness for a very short period of time was fully realized. Subsequently, in, in, you know, very short trip we were able to actually deploy a number of food programs that had a totally different delivery model where you didn't have to do an intake you didn't have to to go to you know an environment that might be stigmatizing you simply drove your car up and got it filled up with food and drove away. So those represent tremendous innovation, we're able to eliminate a lot of the transportation barrier services to allow people to just simply call in and maybe text a picture of some documentation needed to get into a program. So the reason that I mentioned those things is that they all have everything to do with the social determinants of health and this notion that a person really does need to be well housed to have adequate transportation to be sufficiently connected to community, etc. So we do enjoy physical health as well. And I don't want us to lose sight of the innovations that we have realized in this time, as we move forward in a recovery effort. And perhaps this has become cliche at this point but I think it is paramount that we don't just aspire to go to where we were prior to the pandemic, but we really use the innovation and you know the tenacity that we've shown in this period of time to propel to an ever greater place than we ever saw before. That was well done. Alright, on to Bonnie. I don't know if I can follow that. Nice job, Will. What struck me I was looking up some things online today and you guys were perfectly in alignment with what I found. I was looking at some disaster recovery things and one of the things that mentioned was that communities that thrive in the recovery space do that because of social connectedness. So apart from the health that will is talking about it's it's about community resilience. And many of the things I heard here today, what were about the human to human connections that were made. We're volunteers, reaching out to help other people. And we think of them as the ones who are there to help. They're reaching out to make those connections individual one on one with a group of other either like minded individuals, or people who just have needed that help. But that's the everyday space that we work in is the human to human connection and that doesn't go away at times like these. And we hope to be able to leverage that more into the future. The storytelling was the other thing I heard that I think linked together everything you talked about. Each person went through the pandemic and still continues to go through it with their own story and their own takeaways. So when we start knitting those stories together that we really create that rich picture of community unity that takes us to help. And it is that unity that really starts building community health. There's the physical people who went out walking together. There are the people who stayed in their homes, both to protect themselves and other individuals, but who might have reached out by calling their family on zoom something they've never done before. Using that method, rather than a phone you actually had a picture. And that community unity got back to the one on one relationships we built with each other or we built with new people, while we were physically isolated from one another. And that was a story I kept hearing over and over again today, and what struck me was wondering how we continue to build on that, whether we're in a 2D picture or 3D standing right beside each other. There are a number of, we heard a number of ideas today. There are other pieces out there. Eastmont Pillar has always struck me they do a town newsletter. And it's different from a lot of newsletters I see because there's a piece in that newsletter. They always interview somebody in the community. And one might think it's always the, the store owner the, you know, somebody, everybody knows. Probably every third or fifth one. It's somebody somebody doesn't know it was the person knowing someone and introducing that person to a community. And it might have been a new someone new to the community they've been there three months, or it might have been someone who was there for six years or their lifetime, who the community didn't really know. But those stories by the end of those stories, you feel like you know something about somebody else in the community. Those little vignettes are that human to human connection that we all work to build. And so, there are challenge if you will or the challenge I throw out at you as people who worked tremendously through the initial stages of the pandemic is for us to figure out how not to lose what was built then from the human to human connection. So all those volunteers who wanted to help who may be back working now. They're trying to build that connection and once they head back into their regular world. They may lose it. How do we keep them engaged. I'm trying to think who use the example of they were calling an elderly person and it was the first time they made a contact in April. They have stopped now that the world is starting to work a little bit more familiarly. Do they need to, or can we still engage with those individuals and call them once a week or once a month to see how they're doing. So when I think think about what you said and what you brought to the table. It really was those human to human connections and how do we keep them going. I think my challenge to you and to myself, frankly, is to build those and keep them going. That's it John no no big. No that's that. Thank you Bonnie that was great. Monique I wonder if you want to share a few roles and spoken. I don't think I can follow that up. I would say I guess the only thing I would add is just that the stuff all takes time and that like I know I try, I feel like I'm way behind all the time on a lot of this stuff and I noticed during COVID there would be times where like the beginning I just like dove in and was just doing all of the volunteer stuff that was great and then other times where I just like needed to not do anything and that I just think trying to just be aware that that's a be aware of like what your energy levels are and being okay and that's like a super hard thing for everybody. And I guess I would just say easy on yourself. Thank you for self that. Monique Elena I said I'd give you a chance you don't feel like you have to but I don't know if you want to share any, any reflections of someone who's been listening carefully and taking some notes. I just think something that's interesting that I heard on the radio today and seems of coming up as sort of this difference between sort of what's coming top down and what's coming between these sort of more egalitarian initiatives and I think that that's interesting, and even with how we organize and communicate in remote working or planning just sort of how we think about where that power is coming from and how we communicate and coordinate through that. So I think it's interesting to hear different ways that that's happening with the state and mutual aid groups and how they relate. Thank you. I get to bring us to a close. I'm going to paste into chat just a little technical thing which is the, we have a closing session. I and the other facilitators have a challenge which is to summarize our conversations and do a quick report back. So you don't want to miss it. I put into the chat the link back to that closing session for anyone who needs it. And I want to just really express appreciation to you all for coming and participating. I mean to me, this, you know as a facilitator this just felt like a really easy and free flowing with a wonderful mix of voices from all over the county and some some really powerful themes you know when we in my neighborhood when we first went into the pandemic my neighbor from across the street sent out a note and an email to all of us neighbors. And she said at noon every day she would be organizing a little exercise class out on the flat spot we call it which is like out in the street. And, and that's been going on since, since March and I'll be honest I've participated once, but I have to say as a non participant in that who gets to watch it out my window almost every day it enriches my life to just have my neighbors out there, sort of participating in something and looking after one another. And, and as I listened to sort of you all describe all that you're doing. We, there are those of us who participate and serve, and then there's all of those others in our community, whose lives are better because of that, even if they're not on the giving end of that, or on the receiving end. And it's, and, and I guess I'm inspired to think with you all this inspires me to think about how do we, what do we do as a community to make our, our communities more fertile for that work, that collaboration, where we're looking after each other and, and where we seize the moment to do things for one another because what we know is that just makes our all of our lives. I think that much, that much better. So, thank you for giving me that that inspiration. And at this point, we're we're do back in the other room so I'll release you and. Yeah, I won't leave right away so that you all can click on that link, but thanks everybody. Thank you.