Gloucester’s Department of Emergency Management found itself in new territory during the pandemic as it became the center of a massive community giving service dubbed One Can Make a Difference.
The department partnered with local businesses, churches, organizations and community members to distribute meals and information to Gloucester’s shut-ins.
Acting Emergency Management Coordinator Jane Wenner said when the pandemic started, the department sought to identify which population in Gloucester was the hardest with which to connect. They realized that when it came to distributing information, the shut-ins were the group that often went uninformed.
Wenner said the department reached out to Gloucester’s churches to establish a line of communications so they could identify who was in need. Once they knew whom to serve, the question then became how.
An all call went out to the community for canned goods to distribute to the shut-ins, said Wenner. She said packages were made up of nonperisha...