Help this unique service project go “viral”

Imagine you are alone in a hospital, in quarantine, and you can’t even connect with family and friends because you don’t have a smart phone…

At virus hotspots across the country, countless patients - especially elderly and low-income - are suffering in social isolation without a smart device to stay connected to their families and communities. Sunny Sandhu (class of 2020) has come up with a wonderful service project, "Connect for COVID-19", and he has enlisted his classmates and alumni to help him.

“Connect for COVID-19” (www.connectforcovid19.com)  collects donations of smart devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, spare chargers, unused earbuds) from individuals and organizations. These donations give digital access for vulnerable populations (seniors, low-income, etc.) helping tackle the social isolation of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and other care facilities. These donations also enable remote access for medical staff on the frontlines. These intrepid, masked students work with hospitals and nursing homes across the country to ensure donated devices go to the people that need it most as they fight COVID-19.

It's so easy -  fill out a form, take a photo of your devices and chargers, and then volunteers come to your house to pick up the devices. Yeah, in the Princeton area they make it ridiculously easy. They make it contact free too.

For outside the Princeton area, if you submit the donation form online, they will provide donation mailing instructions.

“Connect for COVID-19” needs phones no older than iPhone 6. Any phone that can handle Facebook and WhatsApp and text messaging. They need iPads and laptops. They need power cords, chargers, unused earbuds. They need money to buy chargers because most people don’t donate those. The device can't have any cracks and must still be working for the donation to be effective.

Security of data? There are instructions on line on how to wipe your device of data, and then the students have tech volunteers who continue to wipe out your data if you missed something.

“Connect for COVID-19” is in contact with hospitals all over New Jersey. The nurses help the seniors learn how to use the phones if that is a problem. The devices break the social isolation that many older folks and all COVID-19 patients are experiencing. This way the donation recipient can see family and friends at time where this matters more than ever.

Three ways to help:

Donate devices and power cords and chargers -
https://www.dhcproject.org/donate-device

Spread the Word -
Share this website with your social networks, friends and family
https://www.connectforcovid19.com/

Donate money through the GoFundMe campaign -
https://www.gofundme.com/f/connect-for-covid19

For more details, and coordinating corporate donations, please reach out to Sunny himself:
ssandhu@princeton.edu.

The Princeton University Art Museum presents: LIFE Magazine’s Photojournalism and the American Century

Join us for a live webinar roundtable with Princeton faculty members Jeremy Adelman (History), Thomas Y. Levin (German), and Katherine Hill Reischl (Slavic) and the prize-winning documentary photographer Susan Meiselas as they discuss how Life used photographs in its weekly publication, from 1936 to 1972, as a way to establish its view of the world as a first draft of history. 

Consider, for example, coverage of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II: what did it mean for Life to publish six pages full of detailed, horrible photographs in the midst of a weekly issue dedicated to “The German People”? Another ready example is a story Life undertook at the behest of the Kennedy administration to try to curtail the global spread of Communism in the face of poverty.  

Was Life merely playing the imperialist, or are such global exchanges the basis of something more lasting?

Join the live roundtable at https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UkCswNgJR3KndXYvrGtyKg. (when prompted, click to sign in as “attendee”)

This roundtable is held in conjunction with the exhibition LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography and made possible in part by support from the Humanities Council’s David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project, Princeton University. Moderated by Katherine A. Bussard, the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography.

PA3 INVITES YOU TO “SECOND TUESDAYS”

A PRINCETON PROPELLER EVENT

ONLINE

FOR ENTREPRENEURS,

NAVIGATORS & THE CURIOUS

Please Join Us for Cocktails & Hors d’oeuvres

Wherever You Are

Speaker: Andrew Voros, CEO, PrevenTive Conservation, LLC
Topic:  Photocatalysis & Pandemics: Bringing to Light a New Approach

Photocatalytic oxidation is a light-driven process that dismantles organic molecules on treated surfaces. These include human respiratory hazards caused by combustion and those of biologic origin. While standard treatments of chlorine, peroxides and ammonia kill coronavirus on surfaces, the disinfection lasts only until the next person contaminates it. The CDC has recently determined that an optimized oxidizing agent effective on MRSA and other iatrogenic diseases is also effective on COVID-19.  Andrew will discuss these technologies, the science behind them, and the stabilized chlorine dioxide application that his company is making commercially available in the next 30–90 days. 

In keeping with pandemic-generated distancing protocols, PA3 and Quadrangle Club are pleased to bring you our first “online Propeller.” So, fasten your intellectual seat belts, pour a libation and toast to loved ones & learning --- even in the midst of perplexity. 

This video will be posted online as soon as available.  To ensure that you receive notice of that posting, please register here.  For information about Propellers generally, please visit propellers.princetonaaa.org.