NeighborWorks Week this year looks different than usual. For many network organizations, the week dedicated to service and community celebration went virtual, as community residents remained physically distant from one another due to COVID-19. Communities turned their attentions to social justice, while at the same time, focusing on community building and community connection. Some organizations postponed activities. Others followed through with planned events. 

"Alexa?" a retired resident says to the digital assistant sitting on the table. "Tell me a joke."

Alexa, a cloud-based voice service, might respond with the one about the cat who stopped playing basketball. (Why? He threw up too many hairballs.) Or the one about how people survived before sandpaper. (They roughed it.)

Some years, hurricane season is marked by one or two major storms that make headlines across the country. Some years, it's marked by smaller storms that disrupt fewer lives. But every year, the Red Cross encourages residents to be prepared.

During world wars, they were called "victory gardens," planted by families to help keep food on the table – and prevent food shortages. With grocery store shelves empty and families told to shelter in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are returning to gardening and to the name.

At their core, nonprofits are set up to help people. But in times like this, the need for help can be overwhelming. Here’s how two NeighborWorks organizations are working to meet the needs of their communities and the needs of their staffs.

Every weekday morning for the past five years, you'd find Mattie Shandon in the kindergarten wing at Chestnut Grove Elementary School in Decatur, Alabama. A volunteer in the Foster Grandparent Program through Community Action Partnership of North Alabama (CAPNA), she would unpack backpacks, go over math problems and make sure her group of students knew the sound every letter of the alphabet was supposed to make.

David Snyder was sitting at his desk at New Directions Housing Corporation in Louisville, Kentucky, when a series of texts from New Directions staff flashed across his phone. As he read through, the chief development officer discovered that a COVID-19 testing site had just been set up across the street from the housing corporation.  

Read "Reaching out to black farmers," part 1 of our two-part story that details how NeighborWorks organizations like Wealth Watchers support black farmers in rural communities. 

Ricky Dollison grew up farming in Poulan, Georgia, on 197 acres of fields, pastures and woods. His father grew peanuts, cotton, vegetables and tobacco. He raised hogs and cattle, too. Before that, his grandfather, known as "Big Daddy," farmed the land.

Farming wasn't easy and for a time, Dollison pictured a different life for himself. He received biomedical training and calibrated and repaired medical equipment at a hospital before moving to Connecticut to do electrical work.