Nonprofits stepping up to bolster COVID vaccination efforts

The messy and confusing distribution of vaccines has prompted a broad array of nonprofits and volunteers nationwide to step in to fill the gaps.

Disaster-relief charities are providing both their equipment and their logistical skills. They know how crises can exacerbate existing inequities — and how their expertise can make a big difference.

Meanwhile, organizations that serve people of color, LGTBQ people, the homeless, elderly and others are jumping into the fray. They are seeking not only to reduce the fear of vaccines but also to help local and state governments vaccinate more people.

Nonprofits are also racing to deploy young volunteers who have the patience and computer savvy to overcome the torturous vaccine portals that have bewildered many people in search of shots.

In Southern California, Community Organized Relief Effort, a nonprofit founded by the actor Sean Penn to work in Haiti, is now collaborating with the Los Angeles mayor’s office and fire department to run COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites throughout the city.

So far, more than 342,000 shots have been administered at sites run by CORE — more than 171,000 doses at its mass-vaccination site at Dodger Stadium.

When CORE realized mostly white and affluent people were showing up at Dodger Stadium, it quickly decided to take vaccines into low-income neighborhoods that are home to predominantly Hispanic and Black people, who have been hardest hit by COVID-19.

CORE hires neighborhood residents to spread the word about the opportunity to get vaccinated close to home. It has outfitted vehicles with medicalgrade refrigerators so it can set up clinics on sidewalks and in church parking lots. At every pop-up vaccination site, CORE has bilingual staff members available to assist those who speak only Spanish.

To date, 70 percent of the people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine at a CORE mobile vaccination unit have been Black.