Our last blog post in April was a plea for volunteers to help make calls for vaccine appointments. Thank you to everyone who stepped up to help with these efforts during the past few months. Here's more information about how Raleigh Village East has been involved with helping older residents get their COVID vaccinations!
The story of Raleigh Village East and COVID vaccines begins with our own residents, some who were 75 and older, who lived at home instead of in institutional living, and needed to be vaccinated in the confusing rollout. We added more to that list when the age eligibility pretty soon dropped to 65.
We figured out the system and got maybe 60 of our own residents vaccinated, and they in turn got an unknown number of their friends and family vaccinated.
Oakwood neighbor Betsy Buford was the first to be vaccinated, and then the flood gates opened.
Raleigh Village East them had all of this pent up knowledge and dedication that we have used to help marginalized communities get vaccinated.
We have co-sponsored vaccine clinics with two providers, a Community Health Center and Wake County, used a phone call strike team to call and confirm appointments, canvassed neighborhoods with vaccine flyers, sponsored a food truck (thanks Duke Energy!) and been funded by the John Rex Endowment and A.J. Fletcher to do all of these things, along with a lot of elbow grease from volunteers from RVE, Activate Good, and the Raleigh-Apex NAACP.
It has been once in a generation gratifying work. Younger generations like to rely on social media. We have created a niche with our phone calls and canvassing efforts, the hard but effective stuff.
Stay tuned for more vaccine efforts in the coming months…..
Comments