COVID-19 Kindness: Patterns of Neighborly Cooperation during a Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which began in late 2019, brought unprecedented impact to healthcare, the economy, and social structure, and infrastructures experienced breakdowns in the initial phase. Demands in social and material needs surged, and they could not be met solely by unprepared infrastructures. Although local communities complemented them in previous disasters, physical distancing measures to prevent the spread of the virus undermined human connection, and local communities had to come up with novel ways to provide support. To develop insights from such adaptations of local communities, we explored civic activities for immediate disaster relief in multiple local communities across the United States and interviewed civic initiative organizers and attendees. In this paper, we articulate our findings into pattern language, a schema of reusable solutions for recurring problems. We present two patterns for community-based disaster recovery and discuss the effectiveness of codifying civic activities for disaster relief into patterns.

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