Letter: A Time for Solidarity
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, our CEO Joe Waters wrote the following letter to our friends, colleagues, and partners on March 24, 2020.
The Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Boone, NC. Photo by Erin Combs.
Dear friends,
As our world faces the threat of the coronavirus with social distancing, national emergencies, lockdowns, and quarantines, we are united with all those who are on the front lines combatting the virus, caring compassionately for the sick, stocking our grocery store shelves, and providing dependable, quality child care to the children of doctors, nurses, researchers, EMTs, truck drivers, police officers, firefighters, and all those upon whom our common life depends. This crisis has, among other things, highlighted the remarkable contribution that our teachers and child care providers make to the common good.
A time for solidarity.
As an expression of our solidarity and commitment, we have made a donation to First Book, which is supporting educators and parents to make sure children don’t fall behind during this time of educational disruption. This is the least we can do. The nature of our own work is such that we are a step or two removed from serving those who are most in need. We owe it to our friends providing direct services to children to support their work right now.
We are changing the way we work.
As so many of us have, we are changing the way we work and some of what we do to meet the needs of this moment.
First, and this is a given, we have moved all in-person events and meetings for the foreseeable future to online convenings. These changes are prompting us to more quickly change how we engage experts and audiences, and become the digitally native ideas lab we aspire to be.
Secondly, we are now programming conversations and convenings to help orient us to this new reality and ensure that the long-term flourishing and well-being of young children and their families remains in view during this time of short-term (we hope) crisis.
Last week we hosted a panel discussion on Solidarity in the Age of Social Distancing: Covid-19 and our Stretched Social Fabric, and on April 2nd we will host a conversation with Lyndsey Gilpin.
Lyndsey is the founder and editor-in-chief of Southerly. We’ve asked her to help us understand how the responses to COVID-19 and public health emergencies are inextricably linked to our geography, our natural resources, and our environmental conditions. We will also ask her about the importance of food security during a pandemic, the challenges facing rural healthcare, and what social distancing means for the flourishing of children in rural America. Register for that conversation here.
Stay tuned for more resources and events to help us both understand our current reality better and stay resolutely focused on the futures we are building for our children and their children. We welcome your ideas about how we can best align our work with the needs you and your organization have in the coming weeks and months. Send me an email to share your thoughts about how we can be most helpful.
The coming season.
As many of you know, I live in the High Country of North Carolina surrounded by the ancient elegance of the Blue Ridge Mountains and from Capita’s office in downtown Greenville, South Carolina one can see what the Cherokee people called the “Blue Wall”, that breathtaking slope where the mountains tumble over onto the Piedmont. These natural features - and the ways in which humans have interacted with them for tens of thousands of years - stand as a perpetual reminder of the need for perspective of the “long now” in times of crisis, disruption, and acceleration. We need to respect and learn from our past, to be good stewards of our future, and to nurture communities which are constitutive of flourishing. The mountains also teach us how to be resilient by working with systems and patterns, and for the common good rather than destructively for our own profit and pleasure alone.
In the months ahead, as we are called upon to stay home, to forego bars and restaurants, to not travel, and to just stay put more, I hope we will do some remembering and relearning about the common good, our dependence upon each other, our communities, and the land, and the larger patterns in which we are contained.
Warmly,
Joe Waters
Co-Founder + CEO
Blowing Rock, North Carolina
March 24, 2020