SILER CITY — The Chatham Health Alliance will bring its Community Resource Hub to Washington Avenue Park on May 18 to distribute free meals, COVID-19 vaccine information and other resources.
The event will run from noon to 4 p.m. The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle will distribute free hot meals, while several bilingual representatives from the Chatham County Public Health Department plan to offer free COVID-19 vaccine resources and information, including where and how people can get vaccinated.
The Chatham Health Alliance will also hand out free cloth masks for both adults and children, while Insight Human Services plans to offer free medication lock boxes, plus other items designed to help people both track and protect their prescription medications.
Other event partners and participating organizations include Communities in Schools, Safe Kids, the Chatham County Partnership for Children and KidSCope. Alliance Vice Chairperson Sara Martin said more might participate and bring resources, as well.
“The Resource Hub is excited and grateful for the strength of our partnerships to ensure vital resources are making it into the hands of our community members,” added Martin, who also works with Insight Human Services. “It has been refreshing to see so many heads and hands come together so seamlessly and work so diligently to support our neighborhoods. The success of the Hub is really the success of each of these organizations coming together to directly engage the community, and I am so thankful to be on the ground to watch it all unfold.”
The Chatham Health Alliance is a group of local agencies and community members working together to improve Chatham’s health outcomes. Last spring, the Alliance initiated several projects in response to COVID-19 to connect people and communities with crucial resources. One was the Chatham Community Resource Hub, a mobile effort among various partner agencies to provide free resources to those in need across the county.
“When we were talking through what sort of things we thought the community needed, we were hearing that community agencies were having a hard time getting their resources out safely,” Alliance coordinator Julie Wilkerson told the News + Record in March. “ … So that’s where we came up with the idea to drive-thru events and to make these hubs mobile. We’re actually going out into the community where the community lives.”
They began last year by partnering with CORA — the Chatham Outreach Alliance — for monthly mobile markets in Siler City, where they served primarily Spanish-speaking residents. Since then, they’ve expanded to work with other agencies and churches.
In partnership with CIS, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and the CCPHD, the Alliance has also brought resources directly into several predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, including Love’s Creek, where CCPHD staff administered 20 first vaccine doses on April 13.
“It is very rewarding to be able to get information out to families and for them to be so engaged,” CIS’ Maria Soto said after volunteering at one such Hub event in Country Living Estates. “... It is so important for us to build trust and to be able to bring information and services to those communities where they are at.”
According to the Alliance’s website, the Chatham Community Resource Hub has handed out more than 10,000 masks and provided resources for over 1,000 families to date. For more information, visit chathamhealthalliancenc.org.