This month’s column will be brief. Like most of you, my life has been changed dramatically as a result of the coronavirus. And the changes keeps coming. How will things be different for us a month from now? Two months? No one knows.
I recognize that this pandemic is threatening people’s lives and well-being. And, yet, in the midst of all of this, we still look for those glimmers of hope for our future. Sifting through the daily stream of news and social media outlets, you should easily be able to identify a common theme that I believe provides a ray of hope: We are in this together.
Whether it’s in Iowa, or Wisconsin, or Ohio, or on the other side of the world, people are realizing that our collective well-being is dependent on each other. To stay home. To not hoard materials. To wash our hands.
In short, our survival guide is quintessential co-op: If we work together, we can accomplish great things. That is why I believe that after this period of social distancing is over, our greater Cedar Valley community will be even more poised to help and open to the co-op’s vision of opening our own grocery store.
In other news…
I am so excited about how engaged our board is right now. After the disappointment of not being able to hit the ground running with all of the new ideas we picked up at this year’s food co-op conference in early March due to the coronavirus, the board decided that we need to take stock of our roadmap and determine the best way forward as we navigate through this pandemic. We are working on a strategy to weather this storm. We know that navigating this effort will be very different in the months to come, but I am confident that we will still achieve our goal of opening a community-owned grocery store. We hope to have more updates on this soon.
In the meantime, I invite you to share your thoughts and ideas on our strategy moving forward. Please drop me a line when you can.
In cooperation,
Tom Wickersham