Blog

Responding to the Needs of Local Communities at the Forefront of COVID-19

by Nisha Kadaba April 22, 2020 | 3 min read

PagerDuty.org is committed to supporting equitable and sustainable communities through the PagerDuty.org Fund, which launched last fall. As COVID-19 continues to affect our communities, it exposes vital and emerging needs around food security, as well as access to essential resources, education, and shelter. This global pandemic necessitates real-time response rooted in a commitment to equity and flexibility.

In the spirit of deepening our commitment to our local communities, we are excited to announce our inaugural round of community grantees to organizations providing critical support during these unrivaled times.

These nine organizations:

  • Support sustainable, healthy livelihoods
  • Uphold inclusion, diversity, and equity values in their service to the community
  • Provide access to basic needs to vulnerable populations in light of COVID-19

Our grantees were selected in partnership with our Community Responders council—our internal social impact champions from our regional offices that represent a cross-section of teams. We are also matching employee donations to these organizations and piloting our first virtual Volunteer Response week for employees to donate their time and skills.

Inaugural grantees:

  • Atlanta Community Food Bank (Atlanta, GA) provides weekly food distributions at 20+ sites across a growing number of local school districts. Each distribution provides approximately 10,000 pounds of food for local communities to supplement meals served through school cafeterias.
  • St. Mungo’s Respite Center (London, UK) hosts up to 50 guests per night and serves over 10,000 meals per month. With increased operations, it serves as a critical place of safety and hope for many during the COVID-19 crisis.
  • Code Tenderloin (San Francisco, CA) transitioned its CodeRamp and youth cohorts to virtual classrooms, and continues to provide critical hygiene kits and essential services to its beneficiaries.
  • Glide (San Francisco, CA) is committed to continue to serve three hot meals to nearly 2,000 people daily, and has implemented safe practices and social distancing to ensure safe food access to their beneficiaries.
  • ShelterTech (San Francisco, CA) launched sfserviceguide.org to support those experiencing homelessness, and is creating COVID-19-specific key resources to educate and inform vulnerable populations on emergency services.
  • Foodbank Australia (Sydney, Australia) is increasing their Key Staples program to support the surge in need during the crisis and ensure the 2,400 charities and 815,000 people they support have access to essential, nutritious foods.
  • Daily Bread (Toronto, Canada) Daily Bread’s onsite food bank has experienced a 53% increase in clients. To respond to this need, they’ve partnered with Toronto public libraries to set up pop-up food banks, which are being run by volunteer librarians, who are helping hundreds of people every day.
  • St. Felix Centre (Toronto, Canada) continues to welcome 300 guests each day, serve 20,000 meals each month, and provide emergency services to those in need while implementing physical distancing to keep their communities safe.
  • CareerVillage (Remote/Virtual) is rapidly responding to the needs of underrepresented students and youth who are out of school and in need of vital support from mentors to continue to learn and build their career paths.

PagerDuty works to empower people to take action that can change the world—and this philosophy remains unchanged during these critical times. Our commitment to local communities is more important than ever due to job losses, school closures, and increased housing insecurity, and we are proud to respond in real time to positively impact the regions in which we live and work.

Our hearts go out to all those affected by COVID-19, and we are thankful to these essential organizations and their teams who are working to rapidly adapt their services and deploy critical support for people affected by this crisis.