Austin Adapts

A

U S T I N D A P T S

Ezine Spring 2021

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED AUSTIN?

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6

Meet the Editors

8

Letter from the Editors

10

A Helping Hand: The Effects of Covid-19 on Health Workers

14

Health Workers vs Average People

By Niko Ortiz

16 We’re all at Square One 20 Distance Learning Stats

By Krish Singh

22 26

Giving Back How to Make a Mask

ByJack Dollinger

28 32

Covid on the Homeless Coronavirus Timeline

By Carla Frausto

Austin Adapts 2020 | 5

MEET THE EDITORS

J

ack Dollinger was born and raised in Austin, Texas. He is currently a freshman at LASA high school. He enjoys reading, playing chess, and spending

time with his dog. He chose to write his article on Caritas because it is an organization he has volunteered before. He wanted to learn more about how charities run and the pandemic’s effects on nonprofits and the unhoused.

N

iko Ortiz was born and raised in Austin, Texas. He is 14-years-old and is currently a freshman at LASA High School. Niko enjoys, playing soccer and football, surfing, wakeboarding, reading comics, watching television, and boxing. He chose to make his piece about the effects of the coronavirus on health workers because he wanted to learn more about how this pandemic has changed their lives and the lives of their families.

K

rish Singh lives in Austin, Texas and attends LASA High School. He plays the guitar and video games in his free time, and the obligatory homework when he’s busy. He’s currently learning German and coding at LASA, and plans to learn much more in the coming years. His article is on how the virus affected the Austin Independent School District.

C

arla Frausto - Martinez currently attends LASA high schooll in Austin Texas where she has lived her whole life. In her free time she enjoys traveling to diffrent National Parks and exploring. When she is not busy with school she enjoys hanging out with her friends and siblings. She chose to write a piece over the Salvation Army in hopes to bring more light torwards how Covid - 19 has affected the homeless community.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 7

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Community is an important pillar of Austin, and unfortunately the virus has dissolved that. Even when people had hardships, that sense of community established confidence.

We are now all stuck in our own bubbles, unable to interact with the people around us; the pandemic without a doubt has caused stress and struggle. Some got hit harder than others: the homeless population, store owners, healthcare workers, and so many more. However, there are still people trying to help.

When making this magazine, our goal was to revive this sense of community.

Inspired by image from Freepik

We wanted to show how people are helping and the changes made to keep everything smooth even during a global crisis. From schools to hospitals to charitable organizations. They are all helping and it can be hard to notice that.

Another goal was to shift perspectives of strugglers by providing firsthand experiences from a wide variety in the workforce. This’ll reinforce the “We’re all in this together” idea.

We hope this will give you the insight needed to realize that our community, in reality, has only gotten stronger since March of 2020.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 9

The St. Davids North Austin Medical Center.

Workers here face much more stress due to the pandemic.

A Helping Hand

Courtesy of ST. Davids North Austin Medical Center

The Effects of COVID-19 on Health Workers By: Niko Ortiz

W

hen the coronavirus first hit, it took everybody by surprise, the world was scrambling to get more knowledge and information about the virus, and nobody had any idea how to treat it or how to slow the spread. Hospitals became overwhelmed with patients as they ran out of ICU beds, ambulances, and any other space. Stadiums and warehouses were used as additional space for patients, but it still was not enough to hold all of them. With all these new patients and spaces, there was a great need for healthcare workers. However, there were not enough of them to treat all the patients, so they had to take on more shifts, and their shifts grew in length.

The pandemic had many lasting effects on many doctors’ and nurses’ personal and professional lives. Carol Anzalone is an ICU nurse at the North Austin Medical Center.

She used to work 3 shifts for 12 hours a week but since covid, she has had to work at least 5 shifts for 12 hours a week. She has so little free time that she barely gets to see her family on most days because she needs to leave her house very early and gets home after dinner.

She only has time to say hello to everybody and then go right to sleep. At the hospital she works at, there was a huge shortage of nurses so they had to bring in FEMA nurses.

FEMA nurses are “nurses that the government pays for to come help out”. This is good

and bad because although these nurses can help out a lot and are desperately needed, they are also “Not familiar with our unit and how we do things in our hospital “This means that Carol and many other nurses have to devote precious time to training many new nurses. Due to this as well as the overwhelming amount of patients there is not as much break time during the shifts.

Some days there isn’t even enough time to have lunch or to “have a drink of water all day”.

Madison Daniel is a nurse at St. Davids North Austin Medical Center and she works on a step-down ICU COVID unit.

She says the coronavirus has made her appreciate life in itself more as well as families

and she feels very empathetic towards people who have had the disease, have had family members contract the disease, or know somebody who has passed away from the coronavirus.

She feels very shaken when she goes to work at the hospital and there are no visitors at all. She

is also very used to taking close care of her patients, but now with the coronavirus pandemic, they “can’t have too much exposure in these rooms.

So [they’re] not spending as much time with these patients” Both Carol and Madison are faced with many new

challenges because they are “seeing something that nobody’s ever seen before”. The amount of deaths in both hospitals has skyrocketed and both of them find it challenging to be around that much death and sadness. There is a “sense of loneliness and despair” that can be felt when

walking through the hallways of the hospital. Another challenge they face is, “usually once a patient’s in the ICU, we have a lot of hope for them. And we feel like

Hospital recieves new batch of ventilators shortly after running out.

Courtesy of Sandy Pantlik

“A Sense of Lonlieness and Despair can be felt while walking through the hallways of the hospital” Courtesy of Kinfay Moroti

Doctor Gives Care to COVID-19 Patient with serious symptoms.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 11

we can do things to make them better. And I think the hard thing with COVID-19 is we’ve had a lot of patients that even though we do everything we’re supposed to do, they don’t get better”.

This contributes to a sense of hopelessness felt around the hospital and especially the ICU parts.

They try to give the patients and their families hope, but, with all the sickness and death happening, it is very difficult for patients with worsening symptoms to have hope. The fact that the

patients cannot see their families in person makes this even worse.

Nowadays, Asymptomatic patients usually don’t end up in the ICU because they don’t need the amount of care that most ICU patients do. However, at the start of the pandemic, all COVID-19 patients would go to the ICU. So asymptomatic patients would also end up there. This was very odd for the doctors and nurses because they were used to dealing with patients that had very dangerous

Nurse Prepares to administer the COVID-19 vaccine as they roll out into hospitals.

“Even though we do everything we’re supposed to do, they don’t get better”

Covid-19 Vaccine Shipment arrives at hospital

Top and bottom image courtesy of Austin Regional Clinic

Nurses administer tests for COVID-19.

Many people need to be tested daily and then taken care of if they are positive.

and serious symptoms, they were used to needing to put patients on ventilators and dealing with patients that needed to lay on their stomachs 24/7, and so on. but when it came to asymptomatic patients, they didn’t need any serious care, all of their treatment was routine, such as drinking Gatorade and being brought meals.

It’s hard to imagine how the asymptomatic patients must have felt while in the ICU because “everybody in the other rooms, all around them, is deadly sick.

They’re paralyzed, on ventilators, and we need to keep some asleep all day. Meanwhile, they’re just sitting there with no symptoms just imagining if that was them”

now cases are steadily dropping in Austin and more and more people are getting vaccinated, so I think this will be over soon” said Carol Anzalone.

Both Carol and Madison believe the virus will end and everything will eventually go back to normal, but they don’t know when it will end, “Honestly I don’t know when this will end, if you had asked me back in March of 2020, I would have said that this would be over in a few weeks, but if you asked me when the wave from Christmas and new years happened back in January 2021, I might have said this could go on for another year. But

They encourage people to wash hands, wear a mask, social disctance, stay home, and get vaccinated if you can To help slow the spread of COVID-19 and hopefully keep the virus in decline so things can get back to normal soon and everybody can go back to their normal lives without COVID-19.

Both Carol and Madison have been fully vaccinated and they feel more protected and more comfortable.

They encourage people to stay away from large or small gatherings “Its the family gatherings that get you” said Madison Daniel, especially gatherings with people you haven’t seen in a while because “If [you] go and hang out with someone that then hung out with four other people before they hung out with [you] and one of those people was exposed, [you are now] exposed” said Madison Daniel.

Courtesy of Flickr

“Honestly I don’t know when this will end”

Austin Adapts 2020 | 13

HEALTH WORKERS

PERCENT OF COVID PATIENTS Health Workers

40%

Although health workers only make up about a third of all COVID-19 patients in the United States of America, they are the most likely to be asymptomatic when they contract the COVID-19 with 40% of all health workers who contract the

36.3%

COVID-19 being asymptomatic. Nobody knows why the percentage of them being asymptomatic is so high, but one of the most popular theories is, since health workers deal with so much exposure to the virus, their bodies are more used to it and don’t react as severely to the virus, therefore not displaying any symptoms.

68.03%

Are Asymptomatic As of March 18, 2021, only 68.03% of all health workers in the USA have recieved at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot. (This includes, doctors, nurses, hospital staff, nursing home staff, and laboratory workers at universities, medical companies, and medical institutions). However this number is rapidly increasing as reluctancy to recieve the vaccine is becoming weaker and weaker. Also, as of March 3, 2021, about 50% of health Workers in the USA are fully vaccinated. for COVID-19.

Vaccinated First Dose As we all know, health workers are much more at - risk to the COVID-19 because they deal with it on a daily basis. Because of this, they have extra precautions and extra gear to help keep them safe. However even with all the extra protection they have, it is sometimes not enough. Although health workers are more likely to recover from the COVID-19 than most people, there still are never any guarantees, as of April 17, 2021 an estimated 17,000 health workers, have passed away due to COVID-19.

17,000

Deaths

Average People

63.7% 20%

AVERAGE PEOPLE It may seem like it is very unlikely for somebody to contract the coronavirus and not exhibit any symptoms, but 20% of all patients in the United States of America are asymptomatic. Asymptomatic patients are less likely to pass away due to the Coronavirus due to them not having any damaging symptoms. However, most experts say it is actually more dangerous to be asymptomatic, this is because you can unknowingly spread the virus to all yout friends and family therefore worsening the overall spread of the coronavirus.

Are Asymptomatic As of May 12, 2021, roughly 70% of all adults in the United States of America have recieved at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot. Also, as of May 14, 2021, about 36% of all adults in the United States of America are fully vaccinated. Since the approval of the Phizer COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12-15 on May 10, 2021, around 5% of all children aged 12-15 in the United states of america have been vaccinated first dose.

So far, not a single child aged 12-5 has been fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

585,000

Deaths

30.33%

Vaccinated First Dose

The coronavirus does not have a very high mortality rate, however, since so many people contract the virus every single day, the death toll can quickly climb to scary high numbers. As of May 16, 2021 around 585,000 people in the United States od America have passed away from the coronavirus. This number is scary high, but we can help stop the spread of the virus by, washing our hands, wearing masks when going out in public, and getting the vaccine if possible.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 15

We’re all at Square One

The Gorzycki Middle School Campus. Due to the pandemic, some of Gorzycki’s students have never entered the building.

Courtesy of Gorzycki Middle School

The Problems and Solutions of Virtual Education

By Krish Singh

pandemic spreads like a wildfire across the globe.

Countries are in a state of confusion and social interaction is not a valid option. Your job is to regulate education for preschoolers to 12th graders.

Curriculum changes, new schedules, technology solutions, and much more necessities are needed to provide education in Austin.

Your decisions and efforts to address these issues will shape education in the coming year and beyond. It’s a heavy burden, but education is a necessity in

society and you had to ensure it could be provided.

District officials such as principals and directors had to make robust plans in just a few weeks after spring break to get schools running again. The pandemic had hit Austin hard; the only means of discussion the district could use were Zoom and similar programs. They couldn’t just start schools up again and continue normally with Zoom; there were many problems that needed to be addressed first. The district had to wait on the state to make decisions

on standardized testing and curriculum. They also had to make sure students’ technology was eligible for a virtual learning environment. The district’s efforts have been apparent since the start of the pandemic, although there are still a lot of issues internally and externally that need to be addressed.

Cathryn Mitchell is currently the principal at Gorzycki Middle School. Mitchell had to overcome many setbacks in the effectiveness of virtual learning but still hopes that more students come back on

campus. She knows that there are students who prefer virtual learning, but thinks that inperson learning is a lot more productive because it allows for face-to-face interaction.

“I think that we can watch [the students] better, walk up

the virus,” Mitchell said. “I understand that some families aren’t ready for that situation yet. If your child is being successful at home, which means they’re turning in their assignments, showing their face on Zoom, and if [parents] are able to provide the support that their child might need either socially or academically, then I think all of those things can be done at home.”

Abig downside of virtual learning has been the lack of social interaction. When students are placed in a call with the ability to hide their faces and mute themselves, it severely limits the social aspect that “normal” school provides.

Mitchell has an interesting view on it; both teachers and students are affected by the social nature of Zoom or other online meeting platforms.

“It not only impacts [the students]. I think it also impacts the teacher’s motivation in teaching

beside them, and have private conversations as compared to doing it through Zoom,” Mitchell said. “ At Gorzycki there’s still a lot of kids with their cameras off so it’s been a big challenge to do it virtually.”

Many students like the comfort of their cozy homes, but Mitchell says the best way to be engaged in learning during the pandemic is to go to school if possible. If a student is not succeeding in a virtual environment, it might be best to attend school in-person for a more “real” experience.

“What I’ve been sharing with parents is obviously I want your kids back on campus. I feel like the safety protocols Gorzycki have been really [good], we haven’t had any on-school transmission of

Courtesy of Cathryn Mitchell

Austin Adapts 2020 | 17

I would have said pre-pandemic Gorzycki kids had about an hour of homework a day, maybe 30 [min] to an hour. I’m going to say that I hope now it’s none.

- Cathryn Mitchell

Courtesy of Cathryn Mitchell

because they can’t just be teaching the dark screens, so they can’t really see student’s faces and how they’re perceiving the information” Mitchell said. “[For] students who aren’t very social to begin with, I think that Zoom is allowing them to continue to not be social. I think we have to learn how to [fix] that.”

Some schools had to cut classes or severely change curriculums.

Gorzycki is an exception. The school had to come up with creative ways to make some classes “work” and let students retain knowledge in a meaningful way.

“It’s interesting because we were scared [to do] a class like Woodshop.

How do you do woodshop when you’re at home, right? You don’t have all of the supplies and tools at home that you would need, so I know that those teachers were super nervous about it. I feel like what happened

was [the teachers] just opened it up to a project and the students could do the project, however, with only scissors at home. How can you do this project with scissors?” Mitchell said.

“We’ve even had lots of comments from parents especially regarding culinary [arts] during Thanksgiving.

We had parents email us and say in the old days ‘I would just go buy a loaf of bread from HEB for Thanksgiving or I’d go buy the rolls’, and now that we know how to use yeast we’re actually going to make the [food] at home.”

Suzanne Newell is the Director of Academics at the Austin Independent School District. She has worked with the district’s Social and Emotional Learning Department and has overseen the progress in providing a richer academic experience during the pandemic. Newell believes that SEL, although is drawn back in the social distancing scenario, it still

Gorzycki teachers and the principal, Cathryn Mitchell, socialize on Zoom on Easter Sunday. It’s a great way for them to stay connected during a special day even with the pandemic.

remains essential.

“I would also say that it’s more important now than it’s ever been in-person because of the distance and the isolation that [students and teachers] are experiencing,” Newell said.

“My department’s routines (this trickles out into the curriculum) is that we have daily check-ins with each other [such as] ‘How are you doing’, a joke of the day, we talk about our personal lives as well as our professional lives, and we try to stay connected because to not do that just kind of adds even more injury to the pandemic that we’re all suffering.”

At the core of schools are is a library, a fresh-paper-smelling room filled lined with shelves of books and others resources.

Unfortunately, schools are unable to provide students with these resources as easily

as we did in the past, but Newell says that librarians across the district are putting in time and effort to provide books and knowledge virtually and physically.

“We do have a lot of ebook options for kids and so hopefully your librarians have made you aware of that through different services,” Newell said. “I know that at a lot of our elementaries’ librarians have gotten really creative and have safety protocols for letting books sit for a few days to decontaminate in between uses. It’s a tough thing to do, but if there is anybody who’s passionate about making it happen, it’s librarians.”

Newell is keen on ensuring that the districts’ students are able to have a similar experience in learning as they do any other year. A

good reminder is that the pandemic has put everyone at square one and it is a learning experience for all, teachers and students alike.

“Teachers are getting a little bit more blend savvy each week, the curriculum teams are taking feedback from students and from teachers and trying to make the content we create for kids better, and we’re learning how to use zoom more creatively than we have than we were in the past,” Newell said. “There are some teachers who had taught for 25 years but nobody had ever taught a pandemic virtually ever and so we’ve really had to think it through.

I may have had a lot of content expertise and I may have had a lot of classroom management experience in a classroom with four walls, but everybody, (including me), was at square one last year.”

“If we don’t go out and see how life really looks when teachers are trying to teach in this unconventional manner, we don’t understand our audience very well.”

-Suzanne Newell Above photo : Courtesy of Suzanne Newell

Austin Adapts 2020 | 19

DISTANCE LEARNING STATS

By Krish Singh

The pandemic caused a global switch on how education was to be ran, and a tons of interesting statistics can be derived from “distanced-learning”. Some learners were left at a disdvatage, companies were performing better than ever before, and lots of correlations could be made. This spread features some of those fascinating correlations.

Zoom User Growth Peak meeting participants December 2019: 10 million March 2020: Note: Data does not equal 100% because more than 2 options were given. 200 million+ If the household income was less than 50,000 dollars per year, 21.1% would use paper materials. However, if the household income was over 100,000 dollars per year, 15.3% would use paper materials. This data signifies there’s a correlation between household income and the ability to learn online.

Information provided by the U.S. Census Bureau

April 2020: 300 million+

Information provided by Zoom Zoom logo courtesy of Zoom

50% of Learners GLOBAL STATS

Equivilant to 826 million people do not have access to a household computer.

43% of Learners Equivilant to 706 million people do not have access to internet at home.

Information provided by International Telecommunications Union, 2020 Laptop image courtesy of Flaticon

Students are about 40-60% more productive in a virtual enviorment. However, virtual enviorments also tend to be distracting, which degrades the performance of the student.

Washington has 85% of its students learning reomtely, but only about 26% in Wyoming.

Information provided by Woforum

Families’ impact for their children’s education due to the pandemic (K-12)

Information provided by the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey All images were made using Adobe Illustrator.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 21

Giving Back

By Jack Dollinger

How one charity continues its fight against homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meal bags ready to be handed out. Image courtesy of Caritas

T

he pandemic has been catastrophic for many local businesses and charities, causing many to temporarily shut down or permanently close. These closures can be devastating to the people who rely on the businesses, whether for employment or for their services. However, some nonprofits are using this time to innovate and expand their reach.

Caritas is a local nonprofit whose mission is to fight homelessness in the Austin area. Caritas has been one of Austin’s most prominent charitable organizations since it was founded in 1964 with the goal of making homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring in Central Texas. It provides many services to the homeless population, including free lunches, permanent and temporary housing and a food pantry. However, like many organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, Caritas has faced many challenges due to the coronavirus. These challenges include the shutting down of dine-in lunch, as well as issues with distributing other services to those in need.

Joe Green is the head chef of Caritas’s kitchen and has been since 2019. Before the pandemic, Caritas’s kitchen served almost 250 people per day. However, the pandemic completely changed how the kitchen was run. “We had to kind of put a

Delivering groceries.

Image courtesy of Caritas

hold on volunteer groups coming in because that would have just added more people to a close quarter situation,” said Green.

The lack of volunteers changed the way Caritas’s kitchen functions and forced Green to feed over 200 people each day with very little help. He had to do everything that makes a kitchen run: food prep, cleaning, meal planning and, of course, cooking. Every day Green makes sure each meal has an entrée, fruit or salad, a dessert, and a beverage. This food largely comes from donations, mainly from grocery stores like H-E-B, resulting in an initial shortage during the beginning of the pandemic. Fortunately, this loss of donations was able to be nearly completely replaced by an increase in federal grants.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 23

As Caritas began to operate in new ways, other challenges presented themselves. Caritas was forced to shut down their dining hall which was an essential part of their meal service. “Even if it was for 15-20 minutes hanging out, having something to eat, listen[ing] to some music, relaxing and then being able to go on their way, I think [it] was a really large impact… when, you know, you’re in a situation in your life that’s maybe not so happy,” Green said.

With the closure of the dining hall, social distancing was practiced in the line outside the facility where clients receive

Volunteers and staff prepping meal bags. Image courtesy of Caritas

meals. This procedure created initial hesitation for some clients who did not have all the information on COVID-19 because they lacked a phone or internet. However, after the initial confusion, the process was not too difficult for them to adjust to because the concrete squares outside of Caritas’s building are roughly six feet long.

Now a year after the pandemic started, the Caritas kitchen has fallen into a routine and has slowly started introducing volunteers again. These volunteers come during the morning and help prep the meal and set up the table

to distribute food to clients Monday through Friday. The kitchen also has another paid employee chef besides Green, which helps to significantly reduce his workload.

This pandemic has created more people in need, but it has also caused new opportunities to emerge in the fight against poverty. For instance, the pandemic has created a large increase in grants, both federal and city, which has greatly helped local charities, including Caritas. “The good thing about [the pandemic] is the fact… that there have been so many other programs popping up in the area to serve

this community and to help people that maybe were on the borderline of having to join a community,” Green said.

“They were having to make a decision between, do I pay rent? Do I feed my family?

How do I take care of this? And now they have other outlets.”

Caritas offers programs other than the kitchen, including both permanent and rapid housing services. Caritas determines a client’s eligibility for these programs based on a myriad of factors, but the process always involves a case manager assessing an unhoused person.

Jason Phillips is the deputy director of Caritas and oversees the kitchen and permanent housing. “We meet with clients in their homes or in the community or in our offices.

And so now we’re providing more essential services within the community,” Phillips said. “[COVID-19] just kind of made everything harder.”

Caritas is taking the utmost care to continue providing its essential services, despite the conditions of the pandemic.

Phillips said that they have had to adapt some services due

Staff giving a meal to client.

Image courtesy of Caritas

to the pandemic to make sure people who rely on Caritas can still get their basic needs met, such as having food and medication delivered on time.

This delivery of services has mainly been done by Caritas’s staff, but volunteers also get involved by providing direct services. These direct services have been continued during the pandemic and involve volunteers working one-onone with clients by teaching them skills, such as cooking or filling out a job application, or tutoring them for a GED, an alternative to a high school diploma.

There are several ways to get involved with Caritas to help fight homelessness in Austin.

If you want to volunteer, you can volunteer in their kitchen if you are either 18 years old or over 12 years old with a parent or guardian. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, some

volunteer options are limited or not available, although you can still donate at their website or host a community event. A community event can be hosting a food or hygiene product drive or assembling care kits.

The pandemic has created a struggle for many organizations, Caritas included.

However, homelessness existed before the pandemic and will continue to exist after it is over. Because Caritas has been working for so long to end homelessness, its staff has been able to see the long-term impact of existing programs and is optimistic about the effect of pandemic-related ones.

“I think seeing the long term impact of folks not returning to homelessness and really being able to [be] reintegrated into our community [is my favorite part of working at Caritas],” Phillips said.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 25

How To Make a Mask

By Jack Dollinger

COVID-19 has made masks a necessity wherever you go. Masks are great at blocking sneezes, coughs and the germs they carry from spreading to other people.

This article will show you how to easily make a CDC-approved mask in less than five minutes. All you need is a piece of thick cloth and two rubberbands or hairties.

Informationn provided by CDC, WHO and University of California San Fransisco

Fold your thick piece of cloth in half

Fold the cloth again, but this time fold one-third on each side to the middle

Place your rubberbands on either side of the cloth and then fold the cloth over them

Put on your new maswk and stay safe from COVID-19

`wv

Social Distancing Greatly Reduces the Spread of COVID

A mask alone isn’t enough to completely protect yourself. It is also important to maintain six feet of distance from other people to maximize your protection.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 27

Covid on the Homeless

How has covid affected the homeless community?

Story by: Carla Frausto - Martinez

The unexpected pandemic has taken a toll on everyone’s day-to-day life, changing many of our daily routines, such as moving school along with many jobs online to not risk getting sick. This unexpected virus required a lot of changes to be made that some found easier to adapt than others. We have learned to live in a new way that consists of wearing masks

and keeping our distance from others whenever we go out in public, to protect both ourselves and others from the pandemic. As over a year has passed since the virus first reached the U.S., we have worked hard to get a vaccine in the hope of returning to our normal lives. Unfortunately for many of us, this is not a possibility, such as the growing homeless community in Austin.

Even before COVID-19 had struck, The Salvation Army had been a hands-on organization dedicated to helping the homeless community and giving them the resources needed to reach a stable life.

The organization faced many challenges adapting to the new situation but took fast action when the pandemic first hit by supplying masks and hand sanitizer to as many people as they could. Meanwhile trying to find a solution to their big struggle of having to adjust their new housings to make it a COVID-19 free location.

Major Lewis R. Reckline, a trusted, long-time member of The Salvation Army organization, said his greatest fear when first hearing the news of COVID-19 was “the fear of the unknown.” Majority of those fears revolve around how the organization would spread the news of the pandemic to the homeless

This is Major Lewis Reckline, who has been the Area Commander of The Salvation Army for many years.

Courtesy of Major Lewis Reckline.

This is Jason Whaley, with child, at The Salvation Army Headquarters, where he has been the community relations and communications manager since past July.

Courtesy of Jason Whaley. due to their lack of internet and news access. They had to rely on people spreading information, usually heard from shelters.

“Most of the homeless population didn’t even know there was a pandemic… we were concerned that not only the pandemic across the country, but [the] pandemic within a homeless community here in Austin was going to be devastating,” Reckline said when being asked about what his greatest concerns were since the start of the coronavirus.

Even after adapting their shelters to become as COVID-19 safe as possible, which they did by requiring masks at all times, changing routines, and requiring temperatures to be taken before and after leaving, they still managed to have covid outbreaks. Luckily, The Salvation Army is a close partner with the City of Austin as Jason Whaley, community relations and

communications manager since past July said, gaining them an advantage by “[helping] with transportation and medical services in the event that somebody does have covid symptoms.” Carrie Green, residential services manager, said in her interview one of the hardest obstacles they are facing. “A lot of our homeless population don’t have any kind of documents, I.D. or certificates. So without covid, it was already a slow process,” Green said, inferring that this process is even slower than it previously was.

Even with COVID-19 getting better, they are still expecting and preparing for a bigger increase in the homeless population, due to one of COVID-19 long-lasting effects.

COVID-19 caused many businesses to lose money and have to let go of so many employ-

ees, putting them out of jobs, meaning many don’t have a source of income to pay their rent or bills. “Our concern is that it comes in the future… when the government says that because they put a freeze on evictions, so some people have lost their jobs during this time, who a landlord can’t evict them because the government is saying: no, we’re freezing this. But when that stops, these people are going to have plenty of back rent they have to pay,” Reckline said as one of his main worries after the pandemic. The Salvation Army has collected many

Austin Adapts 2020 | 29

funds to help as many people as they can keep their homes and find new jobs to provide for them.

jobs that can provide them with enough money to pay for the constantly rising living expenses in Austin.

They have many programs set up in place to provide those in need help with finding new jobs and sources of income, but as Whaley said, “Austin is a booming city in terms of bringing in big business.” This is attracting major companies to move their headquarters to Austin raising prices. This is causing the homeless population a harder time finding

Even with the mess that covid has caused to the homeless community, The Salvation Army takes a “very holistic approach to end homelessness,” Whaley said. Not only do they offer onsite childcare to help parents seek out jobs, but they also offer many different programs to suit people’s needs.

Before COVID-19 struck they offered many different sum-

mer camps, including camps for disadvantaged children, but now they have had to put a pause on those.

“Those volunteer opportunities have been cut in half, if not more, and so that’s been a really difficult thing,” Whaley said. Sadly, he has been reacting to what were some of the hardest obstacles to adapt to, but Green remains optimistic and is trying to be “proactive versus reactive,” Green said.

Due to the shortage in volunteering they do claim that

This is the Rathgeber Center that has helped so many people since it opened last year and brought hope to The Salvation Army, being one of the projects that stayed untouched from covid.

Courtesy of The Salvation Army of Austin.

they are in shortage of many supplies, and any donation would help. “Because the need is so much greater in our community, that’s definitely put a strain on our resources, and so really the best way people can help is to donate,” Whaley said. Green agrees with him, including the shortage of cleaning supplies. If you are looking for ways to help out the homeless community here in Austin they welcome you to donate at give.salvationarmyusa.org because anything would help.

The one thing is that The Salvation Army refuses to let covid affect their enthusiasm and motivation to do better and improve.

Their goals remain untouched allowing them to focus more on their victories as a form of

encouragement. For example, just last year they opened a new family shelter center that has been able to house and help many families in need, known as The Rathgeber Center. This was all possible due to the great founders that they have, who provided money to help accomplish this victory for many. These people are all very dedicated to their jobs and have a mission to change the world and help the people in it. “We learn from here and how we can just move forward and help people put their lives back together,” Reckline said. Covid has made a huge negative impact on the homeless population in Austin, but with the help of The Salvation Army, those in need are receiving as much help as possible.

This is The Salvation Army’s logo used to spread awarness of their cause .

Courtesy of The Salvation Army of Austin.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 31

Coronavirus TIMELINE

Covid - 19 has taken a toll on everyones day to day life, follow along to see how it all started and major events taken place since then.

By: Carla Frausto - Martinez

31 DEC. 2019

China reports cases of unknown pheumonia to the World Organazation China Ciuntry Office.

Fisrt death of Covid - 19 was announced to the public.

Fist case of Covid 19 was reported and comfirmed in the U.S.

11 JAN. 2020

21 JAN. 2020

First Covid - 19 death was reported in the U.S

29 FEB. 2020

2 MAR. 2020

CDC claims that around 2.8 million people have recived the vacine so far and 14 of the 20 million doses have been distributed.

31 DEC. 2020

10 JUN. 2020

19 MAR. 2020

Over 2 million cases have been comfirmed in the U.S. with rising deaths everyday.

California becomes the first state to issue state wide stay at home order due to their high number of cases and deaths.

15 MAR. 2020

3 MAR. 2020

University suspends programs to countries having any commfirmed Covid - 19 cases.

12 MAR. 2020

CDC recomends no large gathering of people in the U.S. and to only go out if it is necessary.

National Emergancy gets declared in the U.S.

Spring Break gets extended and classes get moved onlline until Covid - 19 gets under control and stops spreading

as fast.

Austin Adapts 2020 | 33

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