Quarantine help: Help for neighbors in times of the corona virus

It is only a small Facebook group, but the effect should be great in an emergency: Jessica König from Bornstedt organizes the "Quarantine Help Potsdam" online. For days and weeks many such local groups have been founded for locations all over Germany. People connect digitally to support each other. The corona virus welds them together, even if they do not (yet) know each other personally. King's story is representative of the wave of helpfulness that is currently sweeping through Germany.

Two weeks ago, the 23-year-old decided to do it herself after she met a woman in the supermarket who said to the cashier: "I'll be right back. It's not all for me, I'm shopping for others." The student teacher, whose internship semester currently has to wait due to the absence from school, ran home, sat in front of the computer and opened the group.

After 24 hours, 700 people had already joined, and the brand had long since been broken by 1,000 members.

"The situation in Potsdam is currently still somewhat calm and clear," says König. "My goal is that we are well organized in the event of an emergency and that a lot of people need help."

"Have promised each other help"

She herself has already made a deal with her own neighbor: "We have promised ourselves that we will help each other if we need help." Above all, she thinks of older people like her own mother, who lives in Berlin and "whom I can't just sneak in to help. If my mother has to stay at home, I very much hope that someone will go shopping for her . "

And because many older people cannot organize themselves online, König took care of help that volunteers in the neighborhood can hang in the hallways – in different languages: "We live in a multicultural society and there will be cases in which People who have to stay at home who might not speak perfect German. " So at the start of her initiative, she translated a poster template into ten languages ​​with the help of others: Romanian, Arabic or Vietnamese.

Specifically, each volunteer decides what kind of help he offers, in which houses he attaches the notes and how he can be contacted by others. And, of course, people in the group themselves already talk to each other and offer support. A school social worker, for example, wanted to offer parents childcare with his sister. König tries to structure the huge willingness to help: "We ask in which parts of the city people live – and whether they need help or offer help."

This article was originally published on stern.de.