📸 : Heather Rousseau
The worried man on the phone asked Anne Marie Green whether he could safely make himself a ham sandwich.
The call had come in on the 211 line during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under a contract with the Virginia Department of Social Services, the Council of Community Services in Roanoke runs Virginia 211, a helpline that refers callers to health and human service agencies that can meet their needs. Administrative staff, including Green, the council’s president, were personally fielding calls about COVID.
“As the pandemic started, and the governor started having all his press conferences, he then would say, ‘Call 211 for more information,’” Green said. “We were blown out of the water.”
Call after call came in. The man calling about the sandwich wanted to know whether he needed to wash his grocery packages, since the check-out clerk had touched them. “This is the kind of questions people were asking back then,” Green said. “They were lonely, and they were scared.”
In March 2020, as the stark reality of the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, Roanoke Valley nonprofits dedicated to providing for the needs of the most vulnerable in society had to leap feet-first into the crisis, even as funding dwindled and volunteers became scarcer. A year and a month later, most of these organizations are nimbly managing the challenges brought on by the pandemic, though some face uphill trudges.
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