Greenland’s emerging social conscience – Voluntary food delivery to people experiencing homelessness in Nuuk

Abstract

Greenland experienced a 5-week lockdown during the COVID-19 crisis. The lockdown effectively took out all public social support and food supply for people experiencing homelessness in the capital Nuuk. This woke up Greenland’s social conscience in the form of a local NGO’s mobilization of voluntary social helpers. Luckily nobody in the homeless environment got infected and suffered needlessly. From a social policy perspective, we can take three experiences away from the pandemic. Firstly, a clear learning experience from this crisis was the need to redefine the broad societal understanding of Greenland a country with a universal welfare system. The second experience was that social work comes in many shapes and forms. Finally, the experience illustrated what could take place when the political and administrative system are too slow to react in times of crisis. It kickstarted the civil society step up and help fellow citizens. In the end NGO’s need to reports back and inform the public system to ensure better social emergency response in the future.

Impacts of community-level grassroots organizations on household food security during the COVID-19 epidemic period in China

“…They took action to provide food to vulnerable groups during the lockdown when it was realized that the public administration was facing great difficulties making effective emergency food plans [ [19] , [20] , [21] ]. In Greenland, the volunteers of local NGOs distributed between sixty to ninety meals per day to homeless people during 5 weeks of lockdown [ 22 ]. Community-level organizations quickly and spontaneously organized food support campaigns, which played a significant role in ensuring food access, provisioning, and distribution for residents in communities [ 23 , 24 ].…”

Job Stress and Burnout among Social Workers in the VUCA World of COVID-19 Pandemic

“…We assume that a larger sample would have been more relevant to illustrate potential relationships between levels of burnout and sociodemographic variables or different fields of intervention in social work. Recent literature has suggested some areas of social work practice which have been more difficult during the pandemic [16,17,24,25].…”

“…To compensate, mutual aid seems to have been revitalised in many sites of social work practice [23]. Some areas of social work posed difficult challenges, such as hospital and hospice social work [17], residential centres for older people and those with disabilities [16], working with the homeless [24], and working with children [25]. Social workers should be vigilant to recognise disadvantaged people that experience more negative consequences due to the pandemic, such as victims of domestic violence, migrants and refugees, and other hard-to-reach populations [18,19].…”

“…National and international literature on social work during the pandemic is emerging, though there is still much to be understood [4][5][6][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. This paper reported on results from an ongoing mixed-methods study on social workers during the pandemic in Romania.…”

Global experiences of social work practice during the pandemic: Digital mediums, mutual aid, and professional self-care

“…In Nuuk, Greenland five weeks of total lockdown successfully minimized the impact of Covid-19, but decimated services to homeless people in the arctic city. Cooperating with NGOs and through restaurant donations, activists managed to establish a tent camp with food distribution, but also identified a gap in the universal welfare system that needed addressing (Arnfjord, 2021). A similar experience occurred in Halifax, Canada, demonstrating how voluntary services and mutual aid could provide support when professional services were inadequate, slow, or discriminating (Karabanow, 2021).…”