Greetings YDEKC Member Executives,
We are reaching out to offer solidarity in figuring out how best to handle COVID-19, and to be sure you had seen the latest guidance from King County Public Health from yesterday, March 4th. We send our love to all who are being impacted.
In particular, officials are now recommending not gathering in groups larger than 10 for public meetings, and encouraging people to work from home as much as possible. With many of you hosting trainings, regular programming and your fundraising galas in the coming months, this is likely to have a big impact on operations.
As of yesterday (March 4), King County is not recommending school closures, unless there has been a case of the virus in a particular school or area. Northshore School District has been most impacted and was able to act quickly to go to a remote learning protocol, but currently this is not the norm.
Based on King County Public Health’s current recommendations we are following their lead on how to slow the spread of the virus. YDEKC staff will be working from home as much as possible, and will be either moving to virtual meetings or postponing larger gatherings through March for now.
If you are looking for examples from other youth serving nonprofits about protocols for staff, programming, or events, please let me know and we can connect you to others in a similar situation. We also anticipate that there will be opportunities to learn from each other about hosting virtual meetings and events, and how to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19. Please let us know if you have suggestions or needs for how we can support one another.
This is a compiled list of links and resources that we hope will be useful to you.
Seattle & King County Public Health is scheduling a weekly Community Partners Coronavirus Call on Mondays from 4:00p – 4:45p in response to requests from our community partners. This is an opportunity to hear updates from Public Health and for you to voice any questions and concerns you have, either for your own organization or the communities you serve. These calls are a part of the Community Communication Network (CCN). Click on this link to sign up by completing a short form for the calls and alerts.
We look forward to seeing you on a Zoom/GoTo/Teams meeting soon.
Take care,
Jessica
Jessica Werner | she.her.hers
Executive Director
Youth Development Executives of King County
ydekc.org | jwerner@ydekc.org | 206.336.6912