What acts of kindness have you seen during lockdown?

[YanaMumsnet]

Despite the struggles we’re all facing, we’ve seen some wonderful moments that have brought people together: families sending each other gifts, friends hosting online quizzes, neighbours picking up food for those stuck at home and can’t get a delivery slot.

Yes, it can be tough. But it’s those little moments that show our spirit. We’re curious to hear from you about any acts of kindness that you’ve seen and find the areas that people might be struggling with the most.

So we are asking you:
How have you or your family been supporting each other through these times? (Especially if you’re looking after elderly relatives.) Have you seen anybody reach out to someone in need? What did they do and how? If you or anyone close to you needs special care, how are they getting it? Which organizations or brands have you seen going out of their way, if any? What have they done?

We’d love to hear all your inspiring stories, so share them in the thread below. All MNers who post with their experience will be entered into a prize draw where one will win a £100 voucher for a store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

Terms and conditions apply

[TellMeItsNotTrue]

I was added to a local Facebook group and there is so much kindness being spread every day.

The people who run the group organise raffles with donated prizes and the money raised has gone to a local hospice, towards food and essentials hampers for people who are struggling, to help a nurse get her car back on the road, to help supply things for the baby of a young lady who has found herself pregnant with no support and really panicking.

People are offering up stuff as they have a clear out and asking nothing in return (all done without contact)

People are offering support, a listening ear, checking on people when they go quiet etc

People are picking up shopping and prescriptions for people who can't go out

Even so much as half a bottle of Calpol when it was impossible to get and someone's DC was ill

It honestly makes me so happy to see the community rallying together, it's the first thing I look at on my phone because I know it's going to lift my mood

[Nottheshrinkingcapgrandpa]

My local Facebook group has been amazing and people have been helping each other out in a way I’ve not seen before

[WowOoo]

One of my neighbours is elderly and she says she has never had so much food and so many treats. We've all been looking after her and chatting with her (from a distance) as she doesn't have any family and has been afraid to go for her usual walks.

[alwaysataldi]

My local taxi firm is shopping for the elderly who are shielding, they just wear the PPE, and leave the shopping at the social distance required - they are not taking passengers - but are making a difference to so many

[Supersimkin2]

NDN, who saved the life of our beloved friend and caretaker. Age 93, Bob was still insisting on coming to work every morning until she yelled at him and sent him home. She's an HCP, not a doc or nurse. Bob is the linchpin of 400 tenants and their families.

A couple of days later NDN checked on Bob in our block downstairs and made him a cup of tea to celebrate the first weekday he'd had off in 50 years.

Bob is single and lives alone, so he loves a bit of company and introduced her to the lights of his life, his two savage cats. They sat on him and she left all three of them rejoicing in daytime telly.

The next day NDN was off to work & saw the cuppa, undrunk, on the windowsill. She broke into the flat, found Bob on the floor. He was stone cold so she thought At Least It's Not Corona and called the ambulance.

But it was covid - Bob had passed out and got hypothermia. A couple of hair-raising days followed in St George's Tooting while he battled and we all sent messages begging him to come back to us.

Six weeks on, aged 93, Bob's fully recovered from covid. He's living it up in a luxury care home surrounded by vast fruit baskets sent by our landlords, who are terrified he'll try and come back to work. He will.

Every night without fail NDN has rung Bob and fed his cats, who remain savage and have become incontinent from stress. She has not complained once.

NDN's day job is life-saving heart treatment, and working in a central London hospital over the past 3 months she's had to deal with gunshot wounds as well as covid.

NDN rocks.

[CheeryCherry]

My daughter in Australia ordered a breakfast and hot coffee delivered to my door from a local cafe as a surprise- I’m a hospice bereavement support worker working from home and it’s been very busy and stressful as I’m not able to meet clients, just reliant on phone calls which isn’t ideal. Her treat was such a boost - and yes I did shed a tear!

[GooodMythicalMorning]

Shop assistants on their way to work stopping at elderly people's houses to ask if they needed anything dropping in to them.

[lolly2010]

My local community have started a Facebook group to help the elderly and vulnerable ensure they have everything they need. Also local sewers making masks, scrubs bags for the NHS workers.

[WilmaJean]

Our local sustainable supermarket has been delivering food boxes for free to those in need, and locals have been 'sponsoring' a box so that more can be delivered.

[PickledChicory]

I think it really has brought out the best in so many. The staff in our local tesco have been so helpful and friendly. We also have a lovely neighbour who organised a community veg drop. She goes out and tirelessly delivers essentials to all those in the community that are shielding and others. Another neighbour made coconut ice for dds lockdown birthday to make it special. These are just some of the little things. So lovely

[flyingspaghettimonster]

A kind lady I barely know who happens to live 2 doors down from my in laws has stepped up to pick up any groceries for them that they can't order online, to prevent them going out to the store. We are 7 hours away so it is a big relief and she updates me sometimes if she worries they aren't asking for enough help.

Then last week my next door neighbour said he was walking past a house at the end of our block and an elderly lady called out to him to say she had no food in her home and her daughter hadn't been round for over a week to deliver more. So I was able to pay it forward and give her a lot of sta0les like pasta, soup, tinned veg and fruit as well as eggs, milk and butter, bread etc. The kids were helpful in picking out packs of cookies and other things to share so that she ended up with a lot of choice. I was proud that they didn't try to keep back the products they usually value the most. We made sure the lady knows if she needs anything to call us.

[Alittlepotofrosie]

@Supersimkin2

I'm crying my eyes out over your one and the one re the unfinished cardigan.

We don't have a street WhatsApp or anything but my neighbors have been amazingly helpful. Picking things up for us, lending us stuff, letting us use their washing machine when ours broke during lockdown.

I've been volunteering with my local community centre making wellbeing calls to vulnerable elderly people - i can't volunteer outside the house due to my circumstances so this is the best i can do. It's very boring and repetitive, and a lot of leaving voicemails but i used to work in a call centre so it's easy enough. Sometimes I've been on a call with a particularly lonely person for over an hour, I've heard some amazing stories. Some of them tell me I'm the first person they've spoken to for days. I just wish i could do more to be of practical help.

[Onabusgoingnowhere]

A single parent queuing in a LONG line to get into the supermarket with the most well behaved little boy in the trolley. They snaked doing the queue for ages but as soon as there was an opportunity, the staff member ushered them out to the front and then called on us all to give a cheer for the little boy for waiting so patiently before letting them straight in. It was a really touching moment!

[torthecatlady]

Our local Covid-19 community group put together activity packs free of charge for children. Dss had one with all sorts of activity books, puzzles and treats in. It was a lovely gesture.

[boptanana]

My friends mum is making scrubs for free and selling rainbow bunting to find it! Just lovely.

[Mum2KSS]

@voyager50

I lost my Nan at the beginning of the year and I had been clearing out her bungalow before lockdown and found the knitting she had been doing. It was an almost finished baby's cardigan which she was making for my sister's future child.

I got talking to my neighbour about it as she was knitting for the NHS and she offered to finish making the cardigan and even bought buttons for it.

My sister was so pleased that she now has something knitted by Nanny for when she has a baby and it was so kind of my neighbour to help when she was already busy knitting for charity.

That is so beautiful!

My husband is a postman that delivers to a small village, the villagers got together on WhatsApp to arrange a card for him signed by them all via post-its and bought him some experience day vouchers. They then had a little social distance presentation for him in front of their village hall, we were all so touched by their kindness and generosity :) they said the whole event brought them closer together as well as some had not spoken to others until the WhatsApp chats began

[jillowarriorqueen]

A friend of mine, who is a single mum with two young kids has been making and delivering meals to many needy folk in her area, despite not having spare money herself and sometimes struggling to make ends meet. She's also been shopping for older or more vulnerable people locally.
This friend is a lovely lady. She is autistic and so lock-down has brought its own challenges for her in that respect. Her young son is autistic too and she does an amazing job homeschooling him. She is having a terrible time with her next door neighbours right now. At the beginning of lock-down, they allowed their dog to jump the garden fence, and over a two day period, it mauled and killed 26 of her beloved rescue chickens. They bully and harass her and her children when they are in the garden, call her a prostitute and say how lazy / what a "benefits scrounger" she is because she doesn't "work" (because she is homeschooling her child who can't cope with a school environment). She's obviously NONE of these things and it hurts her deeply and upsets the children to be spoken of like this.

In spite of all this horribleness and hatred, she remains positive and continues to help and do all she can for anyone and everyone around her. She deserves something lovely to happen, she really does.
Can she win please?

[Forkinghell]

My local pub have opened their garden for families to use in alloted time slots free of charge and they have given away boxes of bar snacks to deserving key workers and groups in the community.

[MerlinsBeard87]

Our neighbour left some vegan choc on our doorstep for my boys on Easter Sunday. Later that day when we went out for a walk he dressed up in a bunny suit and waved at them from a distance. They were so excited that the Easter bunny visited them. It was such a nice gesture and we had no idea he was going to do that

[ihoeihoeihoe]

I didn’t witness it but my best friend told me about a time she went shopping at the beginning of the lockdown when most people were going crazy. She was queueing to get into the supermarket and there was a big queue, the security didn’t offer her to jump to the front so as she was walking to the back my friend had offered her to go in front of her as she was only 2/3 people away from entering. Everyone behind was complaining and the old lady started to get upset, so my friend told them all off I’m sure there was lots of obscenities and comforted her. I’m proud to know some people that didn’t turn into baboons when all this started.

[KateOxford]

How have you or your family been supporting each other through these times? (Especially if you’re looking after elderly relatives.) my sister and I shop for my dad and deliver it; we talk through the window and the kids wave.

• Have you seen anybody reach out to someone in need? What did they do and how? My neighbours set up a street what’s app group, when one working as a doctor asked if anyone could sew hair bands for the ward staff a whole group rallied around and have been sewing bags, hair bands and scrubs for the local hospital staff.
  
• If you or anyone close to you needs special care, how are they getting it? The street group help any neighbours who need things such as prescriptions collecting, or any shopping but everyone has managed really well and there’s been lots of support.
  
• Which organizations or brands have you seen going out of their way, if any? What have they done? Waitrose helping customers shop for basics for food banks and setting up a special NHS area for NHS staff to shop from, and allowing NHS staff to skip the queue- a little thing but I know greatly appreciated by my neighbour at the end of her shift.

[CMOTDibbler]

Theres a lady in my town who despite the fact that her household is shielding, as are other members of her family, and that she has had to go on UC as she has no income has set up a community pantry on the 'take what you need, leave what you can spare' principle as is now organising food bags to go to families who are struggling. Shes also set up a cooking on a budget FB group to share recipes using whatever is cheapest and available, plus making extra of the recipe to put in the community pantry fridge

[Rainbowcolours1]

I'm a Headteacher who is running a foodbank to help some of our most vulnerable families. We were running low on stock so my husband posted on Facebook that we needed food. People could drop donations off in box outside our house or we would pick donations up. We nad enough food donated to feed around 20 families for three weeks, plus several financial donations. Some donors we knew, others we didn't, often we jus found food in the box or an envelope through the door. People helping people...amazing response.

[MissMoan]

It is wonderful seeing neighbours helping neighbours. We have never interacted properly before, but I've shopped for elderly neighbours, they've given me plants, others are helping to put wheely bins out. This crisis seems to have fostered some wonderful relationships despite being apart.

[grannybiker]

I'm loving to see how communities are supporting each other.
At the beginning, if someone asked for, say, information on local stores with baby milk stocks, there was often a flurry of offers. Far more heartwarming than people grumbling about stockpiling and their neighbours buying Easter eggs.