On March 23, the Province of Manitoba launched a new website to help volunteers safely connect with fellow Manitobans in need of assistance. Intended to be a province-wide hub, Help Next Door allows people to enter their information to ask for help or answer people’s requests by volunteering to help.

The safety of both types of site users is important. Help Next Door asks users to create a profile and enter a government-issued identification number, such as your driver’s license number.

The website is intended to serve Manitoba residents unable to leave their residence—elderly, disabled, and medically vulnerable—and in need of groceries, medication, and emergency snow clearing, to cite some common examples.

Premier Brian Pallister has described the online tool as innovative. “[It] puts people all over the province who need assistance easily in contact with those nearby, while adhering to social distancing protocols, who want to help them,” he says.

But local reactions to the website have been mixed and requests for help have so far been slow to appear.

“I think it could be useful if people are using it properly, reading the rules and keeping social distancing in mind,” says Catherine Casper, a local woman who has worked in social services for three years. “It could even be used after this is all over, to continue to help those who are elderly or physically handicapped, and even those who have no car, being able to ask for a ride with some degree of safety, as the site requires ID information to be inputted. In a lot of communities, though, there are Facebook groups… who already do many of these things.”

In this time of social distancing, volunteers and community organizations are feeling the need to effectively increase our ability to connect using virtual means that still produce tangible help.

Daniel Williams, a pastoral administrator for Maranatha Niverville, says the church has been facilitating online connection, since the COVID-19 crisis has put so many restrictions on social gatherings. They already had an existing online presence, and like many other churches they have made their weekly sermons available online as a podcast. Since March 22, regular Sunday services have been cancelled for the foreseeable future and have moved to streaming services.

“We’re figuring things out day by day,” says Williams. “We already had a website and a couple of Facebook groups for general connection in our church… More so, from a church body, it’s an opportunity to share what we have, material needs, or service needs, and an opportunity for the church to respond. You can offer things you have or don’t need, freely based, no buying or selling.”

Aside from their Facebook groups, which help facilitate requests for help, the church is uncertain if they will make use of the Help Next Door website.

“We’ve had these conversations about using a volunteerism site like [Help Next Door], but at this time I’m not sure if we’ll try to make use of that one,” Williams says.

At two days old, so far all the requests on Help Next Door have come from Winnipeg, and some requests have even broken the rules of the site by requesting home-cleaning or placing spam-like advertisements.

“Some people are not reading the rules very clearly and not understanding the usage,” says Casper. “I know that I didn’t see the rules until I read the FAQ. There’s an email with the rules, but it went to my spam folder and I almost missed it. Perhaps it needs to be a bigger part of the initial application process to join the site.”

While the site may be slow to take off and existing local online initiatives may still serve the needs in their immediate communities, Casper feels there is at least some benefit for the government to establish an online presence to try to manifest the same help that other organic initiatives are already doing.

“But I think the idea will need some tweaking,” says Casper. “It has too much of an ability to be used to spam or ask for things outside of the listed options. A dedicated admin? An ability to ‘report’ maybe? It was likely rushed, which I understand, and these details will come with time.”