Functioning village life.
So you could overwrite what Corona started in the Leitzach Valley in spring.
And not just in one place, but in the entire valley.
Leitzachtal
- Functioning village life.
So you could overwrite what Corona started in the Leitzach Valley in spring.
And not just in one place, but in the entire valley and all the way to Bayrischzell.
As soon as the first lockdown was pronounced, various cogs began to turn, which interlocked like clockwork within a very short time.
Among other things, an extensive platform was established under the hashtag “#leitzachtalerhelfenzam”, which not only brings together those looking for help and those willing to help, but also gathers a lot of interesting facts about life under the pandemic and looks beyond the time in which it shapes everyday life.
The initial Corona aid has long since become a village or community aid whose driving forces encourage their fellow citizens to dare to ask for support.
SC Wörnsmühl does the shopping
"We are not a party service, but we are happy to help with all everyday problems," says Johannes Zehetmeier from SC Wörnsmühl and tells how he and his football colleagues set up a driving service for shopping trips and errands with all available club vehicles right at the beginning of the Corona restrictions in March on their feet;
supported by the municipality of Fischbachau, whose mayor Josef Lechner contributed logistics, another vehicle and the official roof of the municipality in his last days of office.
Zehetmeier jogged from house to house with flyers in Wörnsmühl and Hundham in order to make the service known to those who did not know about it from social media.
At the same time, but still independently of one another, Regina Steinberger became active.
She set up a "Helferkreis Corona Leitzachtal" and knitted the Facebook page #leitzachtalerhelfenzam with a hot needle in order to network those who need support or want to get involved.
In the general confusion of local elections and the decline in public life with all the uncertainties and imponderables caused by the little-known virus, help in the Leitzach valley quickly got rolling.
Active support from Nicole von Stackelberg, chairwoman of the Catholic women's association in Fischbachau, Marga Mariutti from the neighborhood help and Ernst Völker from the association “Herz und Verstand”.
They also made their offer public through general practices, pharmacies and nursing services.
“We quickly had around 20 helpers from the entire community area,” recalls Zehetmeier and Steinberger, outlining the activities on offer: from shopping and running errands to washing clothes and helping children with schoolwork and homework, to looking after animals and chatting on the phone.
Whereby they see this as suggestions, not as a rigid offer.
They try to make what is needed possible.
Helpers became friends
There was the old lady, for example, who every few weeks looks for someone to drive her to the supermarket and later to help carry the purchases into the apartment.
Or those who just came out of rehab and had trouble vacuuming.
A helper was found with whom the chemistry was so good that it became a friendship.
"They are still connected to this day," says Steinberger happily, who knows of some cases in which contact has never been broken even over the summer.
Five such constellations have found each other permanently and Zehetmeier has also observed that many things are now arranged directly without mediation.
Nevertheless, it is important to the initiators to continue to offer their services and to give their fellow citizens the feeling that there is someone they can turn to: "We are in the position of attention." Often they are one-off requests for there is usually a quick solution.
Sometimes a little more advance notice is required, but with Steinberger's organizational talent and network that she has built up for a wide variety of aid projects since the flood in 2013, they were able to help everyone.
The children who live in Switzerland and were worried about their elderly parents in the Leitzach Valley.
Or the elderly couple who became seriously ill in the spring and, of all things, had to struggle with dementia more and more as the lockdown began.
Until the daughter, who lives in Mühldorf, was able to organize a 24-hour care service, the helpers stepped in.
The women's association took care of warm food and a home-baked cake every week.
In this way, “nice, intense acquaintances” arise again and again, say the helpers.
Support is fun
In addition, the pleasure that they experience with each other because it is fun “when you have people around you who also think outside the box”, move something together and for whom one thing is important: “Shake hands with others and not with your finger point at them. ”Not just in times of Corona.
Because, "there are also other reasons to help," assert Steinberger and Zehetmeier, who are optimistic despite all the restrictions: "Somehow things will continue with each other."
The action
“Readers help readers” of our newspaper runs until the end of the month. Deposits are possible at the Kreissparkasse Miesbach-Tegernsee under IBAN DE 04 7115 2570 0000 0133 00. This year, organizations that help people in the district through the corona pandemic benefit.
