online community centre
Sam from Edinburgh Coronavirus Support shares their story on what they did, and what we can learn from it.
Edinburgh Coronavirus Support (ECS) started as a Facebook group aiming to facilitate grass roots community support, before becoming an assortment of online communities committed to strengthening Edinburgh’s resilience. Having been involved in each community, I will tell a part of our story through my lens describing the impacts and learnings that we discovered along the way. Though, it must be emphasised that one person could not do justice to the sum of individual acts of support that were enacted for local communities.
Who Are We?
9200 Facebook members.
44 Affiliate Local FB Groups.
2500 signed up to a volunteer database.
13 Facebook moderators on FB Messenger.
16-person content design team on Slack.
5-person leadership WhatsApp group.
Why?
It feels natural to start with what compelled me to participate in this unique phenomenon. Despite being a key worker, I still felt that plunging stasis of a lockdown I didn’t understand. Though, there was also a communal feeling of wanting to have a purpose and stay connected to each other. Due to studying communications at QMU, seeing the exponential development of organic altruistic communities became a tantalising prospect to do good, and I wanted to use what I knew to strengthen the cause.
Our Story
That was how I became involved, but truthfully the group started in February thanks to two engineering Doctoral students at the Edinburgh Uni who had the foresight to see what was coming. They created a database platform via Google Forms, categorising people by their stated skillsets and volunteering interests relevant to the pandemic. Simultaneously, interest in a pandemic support platform increasing on the prominent ‘Meadows Share’ group, and key members joined with the database creators to form ECS. Originally, the aim was to create an app that was able to directly link service users to volunteers with the relevant skills/interest, kind of like volunteer Uber. A local Third Sector Interface highlighted the numerous safeguarding and bureaucratic barriers which would make this inappropriate. So, we had this large Facebook platform that would allow organic member-to-member initiated support, whilst also having the now separated database of volunteers ready to support the community in crisis. This is largely where my activities begin.
The third sector struggled logistically with the wave of volunteer interest during lockdown, in the midst of transitioning to home working and funding challenges. Having an organised, categorised database of volunteers seemed like a valuable logistical asset given these challenges. Therefore, we deemed that the volunteer database employed solely as a resource for charities, interestingly providing a bridge between informal volunteers and formal volunteering. To build connections and trust with the Third sector I produced a Twitter account, and co-managed the Slack group designing the website which brought the two strands of the operation together, whilst adding helpful links to aid organisations and businesses doing delivery. Through engaging with earned news media, we connected and contributed to a SCVO ‘Digi-Listen’ podcast about building online communities and formed a relationship with the longstanding Glasgow Caring City (GCC) community resilience group, orchestrating a delivery of 10000 units of their #SoapAid to Edinburgh foodbanks. This connection with GCC was intriguing as they are a Global Health hygiene aid charity that doubles as a domestic community resilience group, which we found was a reoccurring theme. We had intermittent contact with QMU Institute of Global Health & Development, alongside Edinburgh Uni’s Director Global Health Liz Grant; the latter interestingly curious about how this community led support could tie in with Wellbeing Economy principles/initiatives as proposed by Katherine Trebeck. The point being that there is much to be learned about how Public/Global Health, Formal/Informal Volunteering, and community resilience groups could intersect to form an equitable, fairer society.
Ultimately, for all the purposeful efforts of a few leading figures, ECS is the 9200 people choosing to cooperate in providing community resilience. What we really achieved was providing a platform and space for that activity.
Key Learnings:
Volunteer Bridging
A user led community support app would be a great digital expression of informal volunteering; or a charity facilitated app the formal volunteering alternative
Alternatively, harvesting volunteer interest from online communities onto a database could be a great model for building a cyclical bridge between informal and formal volunteering.
People could become intermittently dormant/active within volunteer circles, making community action more normative and pervasive.
Everything in Moderation
Community is not controlled but facilitated.
Community guidelines and trusted moderators are key to developing the tone/culture of an online community.
Reliability and accuracy must take priority in tackling disinformation and politicisation.
Online Community Centre
Using social platforms like spaces in a virtual community centre.
If choosing a different platform for a particular audience they must understand it, and it must serve the purpose of that group’s activity.
What do you think Scotland could learn from the action you took going forward?
Generally, I think Scotland could learn from how valuable the voluntary sector is, especially in a crisis.
Specifically to ECS, I think Scotland could learn how social media could be harnessed to become a form of online community centre, facilitating a bridge between informal and formal volunteering. That would make Scotland a fairer place by opening the empowering opportunity of volunteering for all, whilst mutually supporting formal volunteering initiatives for the wellbeing of society.