What impact does the pandemic have on our planning?
ASP is about bringing people together into a community - volunteers, staff, and families being served. Volunteers travel and work together for an extended period, live in lose quarters, and enter families' homes. Our fundraising and training events bring large groups of people together as well. All of these things may be contraindicated during a pandemic.
Friends of Appalachia will not take volunteers into a situation that we feel unsafe. Appalachia Service Project will not host volunteers unless it feels it an do so safely. In the summer of 2020, that resulted in the cancellation not only of our trip, but all ASP trips, impacting both thousands of volunteers and hundreds of families that we counting on their help.
Nobody know what the pandemic situation will be by next summer. It is certainly a possibility that we or ASP will have cancel the trip again. But we do know that if don't start preparing now, we definitely won't be in a position to pull off a successful mission trip in 2021. So we will get started. Our plans will evolve along with the circumstances.
FOA remains committed to the goal of addressing substandard housing in Appalachia to the best of our ability, so if the decision has to be made to cancel again, we will, again, send the funds to ASP to be used for what it was originally intended for - funding home repairs for those in need - even if it wouldn't be us doing the work.
ASP is about bringing people together into a community - volunteers, staff, and families being served. Volunteers travel and work together for an extended period, live in lose quarters, and enter families' homes. Our fundraising and training events bring large groups of people together as well. All of these things may be contraindicated during a pandemic.
Friends of Appalachia will not take volunteers into a situation that we feel unsafe. Appalachia Service Project will not host volunteers unless it feels it an do so safely. In the summer of 2020, that resulted in the cancellation not only of our trip, but all ASP trips, impacting both thousands of volunteers and hundreds of families that we counting on their help.
Nobody know what the pandemic situation will be by next summer. It is certainly a possibility that we or ASP will have cancel the trip again. But we do know that if don't start preparing now, we definitely won't be in a position to pull off a successful mission trip in 2021. So we will get started. Our plans will evolve along with the circumstances.
FOA remains committed to the goal of addressing substandard housing in Appalachia to the best of our ability, so if the decision has to be made to cancel again, we will, again, send the funds to ASP to be used for what it was originally intended for - funding home repairs for those in need - even if it wouldn't be us doing the work.
