2 college students create ‘Covaid’ site
Website matches volunteers to those needing help with groceries, medication pickups
AUDUBON Methacton High School graduates Debanik Purkayastha and Jeffrey Li have put their technological skills to good use by creating Covaid, a website to help the area’s most vulnerable residents amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Our hope is that a platform like this can ... give people a platform to understand what community is,” Purkayastha said. “A platform to show kindness to their neighbors and just in general help one another out through tough times and through times that society is working as it should.”
Purkayastha attends Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Li goes to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Both are 22-year-old computer science majors and in their final semesters of college.
With many universities effectively shutting down and moving classes online, Purkayastha said Google spreadsheets in their respective college towns circulated and allowed students to help one another.
Purkayastha and Li added they were inspired by the “caremongering” campaign coming out of Canada. The “mutual aid movement” aims to provide a vehicle for people to volunteer their time to get groceries and medication for those in need, Purkayastha said.
Li noted the previously circulated spreadsheets focused more on metropolitan areas, and they wanted to make it more “locationbased” so that other suburban or rural areas can also participate.
“We just hope that it’ll give people’s kindness a platform to create change or a way for people to express their generosity,” Li said.
Purkayastha agreed, and thought there would be an “eas
ier user experience with a website” instead of a Google app.
“We’re providing a platform to enable mutual aid of the community, but we want to do it in a way that makes it as easy as possible for both sets of users: those who are requesting help and those that are offering help,” Purkayastha said.
It took about one week to get the site built and online. Roughly 154 people had signed up as volunteers as of Friday afternoon, and Purkayastha noted that most reside in the Montgomery County area, “which is nice to see that we’re doing something close to home.”
Purkayastha and Li
agreed the website aims to help those most susceptible to contracting COVID-19, which include people who are elderly, immunocompromised or have underlying health issues.
“I think that’s the main goal; [it’s] one more extra step to take to help the public that’s considered higher risk,” Purkayastha said.
So how does it work? The site provides portals for volunteers and people looking for assistance.
Good Samaritans interested in participating can sign up online and click on
“want to help your community?” They will then answer a questionnaire and input the types of chores they’re willing to do, Li said. He added people can also switch their “availability” on or off, “if they are already satisfying someone’s request.”
The volunteers’ inquiries will show up in a certain radius based on their ZIP code. According to the website, those tasks include picking up food, medication, offering donations and giving emotional support.
Purkayastha urged people exhibiting any symptoms of COVID-19 — which include fever, cough and shortness of breath — or who have traveled in the past two weeks to refrain from signing up.
“The only real way that we can prevent the spread of the virus is if we’re all upfront about it, and we all are making sure that we are benefiting our community, and sometimes the best way to benefit your community is just distance yourself from it just given the time,” Purkayastha said.
People in need of assistance are encouraged to “click on [the] individual offer,” and they will be prompted to fill out their contact information, Purkayastha said.
People looking to get groceries or medication delivered should try to call ahead to the store and purchase ahead of time, Purkayastha said. Alternatively, volunteers can be reimbursed via online payment transfers including Venmo or PayPal.
“We just think that’s one more step to kind of promote social distancing and one more step to avoid interaction,” Purkayastha said.
As it’s a new website, Purkayastha anticipated future obstacles as more people start signing up and asking for assistance from volunteers. He and Li will work to fix any “bugs” as issues arise.
“The app isn’t finalized, it’s not complete,” Purkayastha said. “I’d say it’s working, but once interactions are happening and once requests and offer exchanges start, I think there will be a lot of new challenges and new things that we’re gonna have to figure out.”
While the co-founders’ future plans for this website are evolving, they’d like to create a mobile application for Apple and Android users.
“[It’s a] pretty unique situation; a lot of people willing to help at this dire time,” Li said. “We’re not really sure how this scales over to after this situation’s over, but for now, we know people are willing to help.”
Purkayastha added that he’d like to see this program used elsewhere.
“Our goal is basically to see first how this does in Montgomery County, but I think the future goal is to make this a platform that is location independent,” Purkayastha said. “I think one of the things that enabled that is we are using a person’s current location to curate their experience.”
Overall, it’s something Purkayastha and Li said allows people to simply do good.
“A platform like this reinvigorates and reinspires people to help out their neighbors during times of need,” Purkayastha said.
For more information, visit https://covaid.co.