COVID-19
Logging On for Recovery
I
work in international development, and until recently, I’ve traveled overseas at least once a month. As many fellows know, travel brings inherent challenges and difficulties for those of us in FA. Here are a few: timing sponsor calls, handling time changes and mealtimes, dealing with food on airplanes, making phone calls from overseas, and finding reasonable substitutes for meetings. Part of the solution for both my job, as well as for sponsor calls and telephone outreach, is the use of videoconferencing services. My life changed immediately with COVID-19. My international trips were postponed, I had to hurry back home from Washington, DC, and all the work teams I managed were ordered to shelter in place. I worked with our senior leaders to formulate early plans for staff in Washington State, where some of the first “shelter in place” orders were issued. Work became all virtual, all the time, and the pandemic forced the closure of in-person FA meetings, flummoxing the notion of face-to-face fellowship for our group. Not surprisingly, when we were ordered to stay at home, I brought with me a bit of ex4
perience in the use of videoconferencing tools. When we decided to move our meetings online, I, like many other fellows used to the digital environment, fell into a new, uncharted service position as technical coordinator. Many, many fellows had no experience in the use of any online platform, and the transition to conducting fellowship online presented practical, emotional, and spiritual challenges. On the most practical level, decisions had to be made about how to send links to the meetings, what versions of the videoconferencing services to purchase, and how to allow members who did not have cameras on their computer to use their phone to attend meetings. There were also emotional challenges. Difficulty with technology sparked insecurity in many fellows, me included. In one of our meetings, I inexplicably had to restart my computer, making me late for the meeting. I sweated out those minutes, as others thought of me as the “tech” person. I was embarrassed, though to this day I do not know what happened that required me to reboot my system. For many fellows, learning to use a videoconference platform was nerve-wracking. For July/August 2022
