I regularly meet people who learn for the first time about the ocean biodiversity crisis, and immediately, confidently, and wrongly say what we need to do to fix it. I tell them to instead find people who already know what to do and help them, not to reinvent the wheel.
This is an election subtweet
hehe. reminds me of early pandemic when i was an aid volunteer. we had a whole task force to guide people that suddenly said “omg i should help” to existing aid groups, get them onboarded, etc
it was never ending and really interesting to watch
i wish more people had studied that time and aid workers. what the helpers do. because it was fascinating to be a part of.
i wanted to make a documentary about it. but in the end, i devoted my time to helping others instead of organizing people to film themselves
it was like living through the “corrupted blood” event on world of warcraft in real life heh. as many have pointed out.
a bit different for aid work tho. and then the george floyd protests came, and so many groups splintered from the political rift, or devolved.
and that made more people want to join in. every big spike new people would say “omg we need to do something about this!” and then, suddenly try to start an aid group when they’ve never done that before, and make a bunch of useless stuff
because that was the biggest problem, people were making junk or toxic things or stuff that didn’t work
so one group made a library of open source plans vetted by volunteer scientists and stuff
but it was hard. haha even MICHAELS the craft store published bad plans.
michael’s said to make a mask with felt and hot glue. like what
hot glue couldn’t last under some of the hospital disinfecting routines and it didn’t properly seal, and felt isn’t a great filter compared to other things
they just completely made it up for people to buy
actually now that i think of it. mask makers had bought all the cotton fabric then. all the craft stores were out of military colors, we were supplying the usa military all branches haha
but felt. no one needed it. maybe that’s why they did that, oh whoa.
because we bought it all. and everyone was out of elastic. people were ripping up their bed sheets like the great depression era, and stealing the elastic from the fitted sheets
god it’s just hitting me, was michael’s just trying to sell felt?? did they risk lives for profit?
anyways, i wish there was more info out there
luckily one major group with the library documented it and did a retrospective study. so there IS some data captured but not everything from every group. i’m proud to have been a part of it
it was wild haha
i was also making data packets and talking points for congressional hearings. i’m not in government and never have been, but because of the aid work we had the best info for some stuff, so the doctors working with aid groups were called to speak
the good thing was, people wanted to help and do good
the bad thing was, individualism is high and almost everyone thinks they invented aid work instead of thinking to join existing efforts and learn from their ways
that hasn’t changed
i wish aid groups were more recognized
we saved millions of lives. we secretly supplied hospitals who said nurses and doctors couldn’t accept donations. we gave them code names and met them secretly with trash bags full of masks they’d bring to work and claim to have made themselves and hand out
Probably - they don't sell fabric and very few sewing notions, so if they wanted to get in on the rush to make homemade masks then they'd have needed to invent something with the materials they do sell.
