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Kindness is contagious: how our community is tackling COVID-19

For many, job loss, unexpected illness and mental health struggles have become the new reality. Alongside medical professionals and essential workers, we’re proud to highlight the creative and caring people using Typeform to make a difference.

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There are two epidemics sweeping the world now. The first is a virus–the other is a global outbreak of good will and community spirit.

In these challenging times humanity is stepping up in response to COVID-19. We’ve seen the universal clapping for frontline workers; people (and countries) donating supplies and money; folks shopping for their elderly neighbors.

At Typeform, we’ve been humbled by the creative and caring ways our user community has responded to make a difference.

These are their initiatives. Maybe you can support them. Maybe they’ll inspire you to do something yourself. Or maybe they’ll make you feel a bit more hopeful for the future.

Scroll down to explore some of these initiatives in more depth, or click to jump. As more stories come in we’ll continue to update this page and our social accounts.

Note: If you’ve got a story to share, let us know here. And if you have an initiative you think we can help with, head here to get free support from us.


Mask Match: getting masks from homes to medical professionals

Mask Match has created a peer-to-peer platform to help solve the shortage of masks for medical personnel in the US.

They’re connecting ordinary people who have N95 or medical masks at home (often left over from home improvement or hobbies) directly with vetted health care providers via two typeforms – one for donating masks and one for requesting masks. These interactions are happening nearly every 10 seconds.

“The stories these MDs, nurses, and other healthcare professionals tell us when they request masks are heart-wrenching.  ”

Colin Schmiffelfing, Mask Match

After their first week as an organization, they’ve already shipped 60K masks and counting. Here are some of the many messages of thanks they’ve received from medical workers:

→ Find out more about Mask Match and get involved here.

FruPro: reducing food waste

FruPro is a community platform for the fresh produce industry. They have been connecting companies from the food service sector whose food would have gone wasted, with wholesale outlets in an effort to reduce food waste.

“With COVID-19 upon us it's imperative that we, the wholesale food industry, make sure people get fed. With restaurants and pubs closed there is a surplus of food going round and potentially going to waste.”

FruPro

In the first 4 days of lockdown in the UK, they have re-distributed enough fresh food to feed over 400K people.

→ If you have food to donate, or if you're in need connect with FruPro here.

The Open Ventilator: helping solve the global respirator shortage

Experts from the Spanish nonprofit talent accelerator program Celera have voluntarily devised an alternative open ventilator 10 times cheaper than currently available solutions.

They hope that the new low-cost equipment will help solve the global shortage of ventilators in hospitals whose resources have been pushed to the limit by COVID-19. By taking an “open source” approach, the idea is that companies across different manufacturing sectors can pivot to start manufacturing these open ventilators during this time of need.

“We wanted to build something that can be replicated and scaled fast. We are committing our own time to make sure that this works and impacts the maximum number of people. ”

Jan Carbonell, Celera

Celera has already raised more than 40,000 Euro for the project in donations through their typeform. They have begun clinical trials and if successful will move on to full production aiming for 500,000 Euro fund raising.

→ Find out more about The Open Ventilator here. You can donate here (in Spanish).

The Piano Bar Soho: turning jazz musicians into online tutors

The Piano Bar Soho has set up an online jazz school after being forced to close its doors to the public. They're using this typeform to connect the club’s performers to people who want to brush up their jazz chops while in isolation, through virtual lessons.

“Our little jazz club in Soho, London cannot welcome guests at this time and the hundreds of freelance musicians that we book to play nightly are suddenly without gigs or income.  ”

George Hudson, Owner and Performer, The Piano Bar Soho

The project has already started to provide revenue for musicians whose gigs disappeared overnight, with the artist keeping 100% of any tuition fees.

→ You can find more information about The Piano Bar Soho’s Digital School here.

Sad Coffee’s “Quarantine” book: supporting people through art

LA-based art collective Sad Coffee has released a book called “Quarantine”, showcasing the art created during the outbreak of COVID-19. All profits from the books will go towards:

  • Home testing kits for COVID-19

  • Vaccines for the disenfranchised

  • Care packages for the elderly and single mothers

  • Families with high medical costs

  • Ventilators, N95 masks, and latex gloves for doctors

““With millions of people in quarantine there was an influx of artists creating, designing, and dreaming…we tried to capture those dreams.“  ”

Lewk Schulze, Sad Coffee

Artists can submit their work via a typeform, and people can also nominate heroes to pay tribute to in the book. Presales of the Quarantine book have started, raising more than $500 in just a few days of being live. 

→ You can preorder the Quarantine book here.

Dreaming in the time of Corona: revealing more about our weird dreams

Had some odd dreams recently? Join the club! Art therapist and designer Sylvie McGowan has created an online dreams database, allowing people to anonymously share details of their dream through a typeform.

“Many of us are physically alone in processing crises and navigating lifestyle change. We do a lot of this processing in sleep, and people are finding their dreams to be more vivid and easier to remember. I am documenting these dreams, looking to find patterns and images to connect us in this time. ”

Sylvie McGowan, Art therapist and designer by day, dreamer by night

Sylvie has already received plenty of positive feedback. People tell her they’re happy to find a place to reflect on their dreams, and that they find comfort in this shared experience.

She hopes to write a paper on the results and is working with other artists to find a way to visually represent the dreams content.

→ Curious about other people’s dreams? Read all about them and submit your own here.

Delivereat: helping to feed New Zealand in lockdown

Denym Bird got fed up with waiting in a huge line at the supermarket on the first weekend of lockdown in New Zealand. He headed home to order everything he needed online—but struggled to get it. So he decided to take matters into his own hands.

“I found no easy way to find out which businesses were deemed ‘essential’ and were delivering. So I had the idea to bring together a basic directory of all the businesses that are delivering across NZ that others could use to get what they need delivered.”

Denym Bird, Founder of Delivereat

So, Delivereat was born. Denym built the site with his friend Alex, pulling together a list of 40 businesses he knew were delivering (from research on Facebook and Instagram). He then added a typeform for other small businesses to register their services.

Within eight days of launching, more than 500,000 Kiwis had visited Delivereat. The site is sending more than 20 clicks every minute out to a list of more than 700 merchants on their list.

“The economic impact must be huge and the best part is it’s supporting small businesses all over the country,” said Denym.

→ Visit the Delivereat directory.

COVID-19 Supplies NYC: arming New York medical workers with face shields

COVID-19 Supplies NYC is helping with the severe shortage of personal protection equipment for medical workers in New York.

The project is a collaboration between handwritten notes company Wami and 3D printing company 3D Brooklyn. They joined forces to help the local community by producing face shields. 

New York healthcare organizations can submit requests for face shields via a typeform. There’s a separate typeform to connect with local makers who can help produce even more shields, using a template.

“It's an all hands on deck at the moment in NYC, so it's been a sprint to source raw materials and scale up production to bridge the gap in demand.”

Aaron Roy, Co-Founder and CEO, Wami

In the first 11 days, they have delivered more than 1500 face shields to 20 different organizations in New York City. 3D Brooklyn has set up a go fund me that has raised $40,000 for more materials.

→ Find out more about the project here.

The Open Creative Alliance: connecting great minds to find solutions

The Open Creative Alliance is a community platform for creative brains to join projects related to mitigating the impacts of COVID-19. The aim of the alliance is to match creatives, marketers, leaders, and technologists to relevant projects, crowdsourcing work through an online hub.

The idea behind the Open Creative Alliance is to consolidate COVID-related initiatives, finding projects with lots of traction, where people are open to collaboration with other people. Current projects include stay at home campaigns, symptom trackers, and virtual festivals.

“We're used to being in a competitive mode. In a market it's very much 'it's my thing and I’m gonna do it better than you.' Whereas here we’re trying to solve problems for the collective good, which means we need to shift our mindset a little bit. ”

Alex Kennedy, Creator or The Open Creative Alliance

After just a few days, more than 40 people have volunteered their services through Alex’s typeform, and over 250 people have signed up to his Facebook group.

Duet: Feeding Angelenos in need

Duet is helping vulnerable families in LA get the food and supplies they need. They're using typeform to help put food on the table for folks who have fallen on hard times because of Covid-19.

Families use a typeform to sign up and select the meals they want and the items they need. Donors can then meet the families on the Duet website and see the meals or items they requested, choosing what to donate. Once a donation is made, the money gets sent to a local restaurant, who delivers the meal to the family.

“The urgency of the pandemic pushed our team to find a way for Duet to help vulnerable Angelenos today, allowing them to help not only our own neighbors and friends, but our favorite local restaurants that are struggling to make it through.”

Stephanie Van Sickel, Head of Business Development, Duet

Duet's initiative has funded over 130 meals for LA families in its first week.

→ Click here to find out more about the project.

And there’s more…many more!

We’ve been overwhelmed by the volume of projects set up across our community. There are too many to keep up with in this blog post, so here you can read about even more initiatives from Typeform users, in their own words.

You can filter and sort these based on the type of project, and the country where the initiative is taking place.

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