“How are you, Jeff?”: Whitney Kimball Coe checks on RAM’s CEO Jeff Eastman

We are excited to bring you this special edition of Check On Your Neighbor, a project of the Rural Assembly that invites you to email or call a friend and ask them how they are doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this short video, Whitney Kimball Coe, Director of the Rural Assembly and National Programs at the Center for Rural Strategies, reached out to her neighbor in Athens, Jeff Eastman. Jeff is CEO of Remote Area Medical (RAM) Volunteer Corps, a nonprofit that delivers free dental, vision and medical services to uninsured people and communities across the country. Whitney talks to Jeff about how they are adapting and pivoting during these remarkable times. 

You can find more stories from our neighbors here.  Ready to check on your neighbor? Find out more information about the project and share your conversation with us via the form below the video. 

Have you found yourself wondering how an old friend or acquaintance is doing during this remarkable, uncertain time in our nation?
We would like you to join us in checking on our neighbors. It’s easy to participate.

    1. Choose someone you don’t talk to often and reach out over phone, email, facebook, or text. It could be a friend from college, a neighbor down the street, an old colleague. 
    2. Ask them some questions. Try one or two of these: How is today different than a month ago? How is this situation affecting your work? How are you keeping your spirits up? What do you or the people in your work need right now? Or simply ask, how are you doing? Ask them to send you a photo that illustrates their current life. 
    3. Send us a few sentences (or a few paragraphs!) below about what you heard in your conversation. Not sure what to share? Check out some examples from checking in with our neighbors here.
    4. Ask them to pay it forward and check in with their neighbor. Send them the link to this page so they can send us some information on their conversation.

Drawing Resilience: Maureen Hearty

Maureen Hearty transforms objects, space, and community, seeing art as a tool for action, education, and opportunity. The majority of her community-based work today is on the eastern plains of Colorado, considered one of the most sparsely populated areas in the United States. In Joes, Colorado (pop. 78), she is activating space using art, music, and the collection of story. In 2020, Maureen and her friend Kristin Stoltz were awarded an NEA grant for a project titled “Arts for a Prairie Seas: Farming Fluxus.”

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