Covid 19
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Whether it’s delivering groceries, making hospital masks or throwing a fundraiser, Flandreau residents are helping their community during the COVID-19 virus.
At Maynard’s, Mike Witte and crew are taking grocery orders by phone, shopping for their customers and boxing them up for either home delivery or curbside pickup.
“We want them to stay safe, so we’ll certainly take their order,” Witte said. The number of orders have increased as more people become aware of the service. Customers call in one day, and their groceries are delivered the next.
In between orders, employees wait on in-store customers and keep stocking shelves with items they get in on a truck each day. Witte said he’s been able to keep many things stocked but some items go out the door as soon as they are unboxed.
If the load of delivery orders is too large for his employees, people have volunteered to help.
“I have about five people in the community, plus the mayor, that are willing to if we can’t keep up, will come in and help,” Witte said.
The Flandreau Ministerial Association, Moody County Cares, the Breadbasket and the backpack program for school children in Flandreau and Colman-Egan have teamed together to help cover food and other needs in the community. Residents can call 211 to register for needs they might have in getting groceries or medications delivered, for example. When deliveries are made, they will be left outside because volunteers won’t be entering houses.
“We can provide the manpower to go and get it and take it to them,” said the Rev. Alan Blankenfeld, pastor at Our Savior’s Lutheran and an organizer with Moody County Cares, which has the primary mission of mental health help in the county. That work will continue, too, he said.
“There will be mental health issues that people are dealing with as well,” he said.