Porch portraits

The Scoop, By Mable Hastings

For the past eight weeks, the Missisquoi North Volunteer Centre (CABMN) has been forwarding evening and weekly updates to over 300 citizens in the Memphremagog West area and beyond to give friends and neighbours news on what the CABMN has done on any given day as a way of keeping in touch with community. As well as the sharing in these updates of emergency food distribution, prepared meal sharing, medication and food delivery information and so on, the CABMN has also created each evening or weekly, short music videos with the faces of volunteers, neighbours, staff and townsfolk as another way of keeping in touch during this time of physical isolation.
In March a video entitled, “Bridge over Troubled Waters” was shared and featured many youth displaying through rainbow creations, their heartfelt words of hope and care to the seniors in isolation during this pandemic. This video received many comments of positive feedback and appreciation. It can be viewed on the CABMN website at www.cabmn.org
Recently, the CABMN sent out a message encouraging people to take “porch portraits” and send them in to the CABMN. The portraits were to include whoever lives in your home, taken out on the porch as a way to let friends and neighbours know that each family and individual are doing okay and that the quarantine or distance, while being respected, has not diminished the spirits of those faces being missed by many in each community.
These photos sent in to the CAB Missisquoi North are used each evening in with the daily happening photos and are sent out in an evening video as a way to stay connected, spread some positivity and to emphasize a strong community resilience that stays ever present through this difficult time.
Some neighbours and those delivering medication have taken the time, from a distance, to snap photos of neighbours as they deliver medication, groceries or as a stop by solely to snap the photo to be shared. For those receiving the videos in the evening, this has meant a lot.
“I just want to say how much I appreciate the porch portraits shared each night in your videos,” said one Potton resident, Sharon Fewtrell. “I miss seeing all these friends and acquaintances and it is so nice to see their photos.”
The CABMN continues to find ways to keep the communities it serves connected and informed through the Covid-19 Pandemic that seems to strive to isolate people. For more information or to view the videos done by the CABMN thus far, visit their website at www.cabmn.org
If you have a porch portrait to share of your family, send it to: m.hastings@cabmn.org Regardless of where you are from, we are all in this together.

Published in the Monday, May 4 edition of The Record.

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