Headwaters Relief Organization in Golden Valley Creates COVID-19 Relief Efforts
Golden Valley based Headwaters Relief Organization has launched a series of community efforts and volunteer programs including phone pals to connect with the elderly, DIY face mask sewing programs, and connecting educators to parents struggling with course work during homeschooling. Plus, they’ve produced a children’s coloring book on COVID-19.
“This has been a big issue like we’ve never faced before,” said Dr. Roshan Khatri, with Headwaters. “We have a lot of programs we’ve created to help communities recover from this disaster.”
“When We All Stayed Home” COVID-19 Coloring Book
Headwaters Relief Organization produces a coloring book about COVID-19.
The Headwaters Relief Organization routinely creates coloring books and children’s books about natural disasters to help children cope with what’s happening around them. They have eight children’s books that range in subject matter, like the Ebola outbreak, hurricanes, and even human trafficking. A coloring book called “When We All Stayed Home” explains COVID-19 to children and their families and helps them identify normal emotional responses and process their feelings about what they are experiencing.
In the coloring book, the disease COVID-19 is explains as well as the importance of hand washing or doctors and nurses fighting the virus. At the end of the book, there’s a section for parents. It includes common questions kids have, common reactions children have to stress and even supportive strategies on homeschooling.
“Even though it’s a coloring book for children, it helps the whole family in a combined way,” said Dr. Khatri.
You can order a coloring book here. For each $5 coloring book ordered, Headwaters will provide another child a book.
Volunteers can sew masks and donate them.
Sewing Masks
Headwaters Relief Organization is also asking people who can sew to make face masks that will be distributed globally. You can learn more about that effort here.
Headwaters’ Phone Pal Program
The organization says many people are home and may be lonely. To help bridge the isolation, volunteers can join the phone pal program to call and check on people in need.
“We have a pool of volunteers and we have identified people who are sick, who are homebound and who have no one to talk to, so we connect the volunteers to that community. They just make a phone call and talk to each other at the pre-agreed time,” said Dr. Khatri.
A page inside the COVID-19 coloring book.
To learn more about the phone pal program, click here.
Headwaters Relief Organization is a nonprofit that has been working in disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery for more than 15 years locally, nationally and internationally. If you’d like to donate to the organization, click here.
