Connecting in a time of social distance
Virtual Lunch Hours at the Partnership maintain contact between co-workers
A project coordinator at the Virginia Commonwealth University Partnership for People with Disabilities has created a simple way for her co-workers at the Partnership to stay connected during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ira Padhye, a VCU School of Education doctoral student in special education who works on the Partnership’s Virginia Project for Children and Young Adults with Deaf-Blindness, started hosting Virtual Lunch Hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from her home in March.
“We’re all in this profession to some degree because of the opportunity for human interaction. Now, life is different. We’re working from home. That human contact is gone. I wanted to keep up that opportunity for contact,” she said.
For each Virtual Lunch Hour, Padhye sends out a Zoom meeting invite to her co-workers and sees who will accept. The first time she tried it, four people joined the meeting.
“It was last minute, I sent out the invite the morning of the meeting,” she said.
The next time, 18 people signed on. Conversations were casual and covered topics familiar to all of us these days.
“We talked about what everybody's watching on Netflix. We exchanged recipes since everybody’s cooking at home more. It’s mainly an opportunity to connect, and to make sure that everybody seems okay,” she said.
Padhye said that some of her co-workers have children with disabilities, or take care of parents or other family members at home, so these sessions are an important way to break up the day so everyone doesn’t talk about the coronavirus all the time.
The feedback she’s received has been largely positive.
“We've structured it so you can drop in for 15 minutes or so, and then leave. It's very low key. We just want to check in and see if there's anything we can do to virtually support each other,” she said.
“This is such a unique circumstance that we’re all in. It's not like a snowstorm or anything like that. Mental health is so important right now. Doing something as simple as this is the least I can do for my co-workers and for myself.”