Despite the challenges set forth to vulnerable communities during COVID-19, community members and organizations have risen to the occasion in several locations across the world. Households have reached out to each other, offering food, financial support, and/or outlets for grief. Meanwhile, foodbanks and grassroots organizations have doubled their efforts, seemingly overnight. Instead of resorting to fear, many community networks have chosen to let the notion of solidarity take precedence.

Therefore, a group of us at Cornell convened to understand how solidarity networks supported vulnerable communities throughout the pandemic. Together, we have created Stories of Solidarity, a virtual interactive platform that documents these communities’ members, leaders, or organizations’ experience of COVID-19. Our goal is that this platform serves as a digital space in which people can share experiences and actions of mutual aid and solidarity in communities witnessing some of the worst impacts related to COVID-19 and the accompanying shutdowns.

Producing this website involved a steep learning curve. While the goal seemed simple, realizing it was not so straight forward. Communities had more pressing needs to support vulnerable members, and grassroots organizations were preoccupied with their resource mobilization and distribution operations. Moreover, building a website that could appropriately and sensitively document community experiences proved to be a complicated coordination and design process that none of us foresaw.

Nevertheless, Stories of Solidarity has come to fruition. Stories for this project have been collected through reaching out to community organizations or leaders and NGO networks who have kindly shared their experiences of the pandemic. Participants have either submitted stories themselves or engaged with students at Cornell during interviews that highlighted community organizing around caring for elderly or sickly community members, providing food, assisting people stranded far from home, or finding ways to help mourn and commemorate the deceased.

As we collect more stories, and engage participants on this platform, we hope that this virtual exchange will allow contributors and visitors to connect with others who are experiencing similar struggles. We also hope that it will create an archive and a path for future learning on the many ways in which we come together in solidarity to meet the challenges posed by the pandemic. As we document experiences, we hope to highlight the importance of solidarity in creating community resilience to social, physical, and natural shocks. Anecdotally, the way we reach out to each to offer or to receive support may be one of the most important tools we have for responding to pandemics.