Tulong na Tayo: Taking Care of the Caretakers

Ten months ago, none of us could have imagined we would be in the middle of a pandemic, a social justice movement and the election of our lifetime.

And more so, none of us could have imagined how much our community would be hit with an enemy we could not see — COVID19.

Filipinos have been disproportionately impacted by COVID19.

There are 4 million people of Filipino descent in the U.S. And 500,000 are hospital and health care workers — that’s 12.5% of our population. And 520,000 are seniors, which is 13%.

Together that’s over 25% who are vulnerable to COVID.

We kept asking ourselves the same question, “if we are so busy taking care of the world, who is taking care of us?”

How do we support our essential worker family members? How do we fight the proliferation of misinformation? How do we keeping going when we are experiencing multiple losses all at once?

As Filipinos, we struggled to address gaps created by distance due to COVID19.

How can we be together when we cannot be together?

We knew we had to answer the call to do something as COVID19 impacted every aspect of our lives and our family and friends.

In 24 weeks, we, as alums from the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO) formed a COVID19 task force, brainstormed ideas, got funding and started development on a project we knew had the potential to change lives.

Twenty four weeks is not a lot of time but it is enough time to make an impact.

Thanks to an innovation grant from the Booz Allen Foundation, we are able to make the Caretaker Project a reality with today’s launch of our Tayo help desk.

We’re starting with a pilot in Los Angeles, with plans to expand to other cities across the nation as we raise more funding to keep going.