Conserving Community in the Face of COVID-19

Hi Friend,

We hope you are all healthy and safe during this unprecedented time that will serve to define this generation.

As our team opted to work remotely last week, self quarantining for the benefit of our broader communities, my husband, 5-year-old son and I moved closer to my parents so that we can support them more effectively should they become ill. Every day has yielded a new moment of connectedness, which I did not expect and am grateful to receive: thoughtful neighbors checking in on our family, moments of levity and poems of inspiration shared within our team and videos from my child’s Kindergarten teacher with the daily lesson (sound of the week is “W” for 🌊and 🐋).

It has been a gift to be forced to slow down a bit and balance life as a working mother with a very active 5 year old to teach, engage, feed and empower.

In the face of this pandemic, I believe it’s important to reflect on our everyday actions and how they impact our environment. This is a moment that we are so rarely ever given to change our own practices - use less, connect more, enjoy life’s blessings and the rising and setting of the sun everyday. We have so much opportunity to be the solution to our environmental issues and I hope you’ll join our team in finding small but truly meaningful ways everyday to make a difference in someone’s life and for the ocean.

One of the moments of awareness we’ve had this week is how precious every morsel of food is that we are fortunate to have. I’ve found myself going back to my gardening and preserving roots, freezing leftover milk before it spoils, and staying on top of the avocados that are beginning to ripen earlier than I’m ready for them. I am also devouring @MaxLamanna’s Instagram Stories [[link removed]] for more vegan and zero food waste tips. Like many of you, I’m also paying close attention to how quiet it is outside. There are fewer cars on the road and the night skies no longer show the lights from airplanes like they did just two weeks ago.

We were also faced with the stark reality that three of our initiatives have exceptional in-person experiences that we now need to take virtual. While nothing compares to in-person experiences to empower action, like the Ocean Heroes Bootcamp [[link removed]], Museum of Plastic [[link removed]], or our NextWave Plastics [[link removed]] member companies convening, we are excited by the opportunity to take these experiences online and to map out a post-COVID19 future.

More than anything, we hope this moment is an opportunity for everyone to practice living more simply, with kindness and community at the center -- which is why we want to hear from you! Let us know what's resonating with you at the moment and what you'd like to see from us to ensure you feel safe and content within your social space. Start a conversation with us on Instagram here [[link removed]] so we can stay in touch.

We’ll send another update soon, but in the coming weeks and months, we can only encourage you to take care of yourselves and those around you. Just as with the climate and environmental crises, there is only one way that we will beat COVID-19 and that’s together.

With gratitude,

Dune Ives, Executive Director of Lonely Whale

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