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Lessons learned from LinkVan’s COVID-19 response
By Nick Ubels
Community Engagement Librarian
UBC Learning Exchange
In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, community organizations in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) had to make urgent decisions. Would or could they stay open? How could they modify their services to meet community needs and follow public health guidelines?
Amid all this uncertainty, residents and community workers could turn to the LinkVan app for up-to-date information about where they could go to find available services in the DTES.
While the DTES RAP is a portal that focuses on DTES research, LinkVan is a web-based resource that allows people to find programs, organizations, and information about services. It’s intended to empower people to advocate for themselves and decide where to go for help. Community members and organizations collaborated closely in its creation. You can read the origin story of the LinkVan project in the DTES RAP.
The LinkVan app homepage.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with William Booth, outreach coordinator at the Downtown Eastside Literacy Roundtable, and Dionne Pelan, digital literacy coordinator at the UBC Learning Exchange. We met at a virtual Tech Café, where ambassadors from the community support the development of their peers’ technology skills. Together, with a group of dedicated volunteer software developers, their organizations have partnered to keep LinkVan alive and accurate since 2016. They shared the history of LinkVan, how it quickly adapted to COVID-19, and lessons they’ve learned about responding to a crisis.
How would you describe the development of LinkVan for those who haven’t heard of it before?
William Booth (WB): The app was designed in the community, with the community, for the community. They defined the information they require, they helped to define the icons that we use. Because we’re a literacy organization, we didn’t want it to be text-heavy.
The [Tech Café] ambassadors took the laptop out for two weeks to their community in the DTES. They got feedback, they came back, we made the adjustments based on their feedback, and then we did a mobile phone iteration.
Dionne Pelan (DP): Throughout the project, we’ve been working with Suzanne Smythe at SFU to do research on it as well. Looking at how people in the neighbourhood find information, how they access information online, or what devices they’re using. When they’re going through the app as part of the research, they’re also telling us what works, what doesn’t work, what they like, what they don’t like. Suzanne feeds that back to the app developers and we incorporate it right away.
For instance, the first iteration didn’t have a home button. The assumption was that people would know you just click on LinkVan and that’ll take you home. But for people with low digital literacy, they don’t know that. Having the home button was really important.
Hearing it come from the community members directly helps to make those decisions. LinkVan can go back and forth on whether it makes sense, is it good or is it not good, but if the community’s saying we want it, it’s there.
How did you adapt to the pandemic?
DP: I think we realized with the pandemic that we had to make sure the information was accurate. Organizations, including the Learning Exchange, were forced to close quickly and services were disappearing. Many of us had to shut down our in-person services so we could get our safety protocols in place. Everybody was adapting on the fly because none of us had any experience with this before, ever, right?
What we did is work with Karen Chiang—one of the staff at the Learning Exchange—and began phoning and emailing organizations to find out are they open, or not. The other thing we wanted to include was if there were any changes to their service provision.
We created a banner at the top that let people know when it was last updated, because in the beginning of the pandemic, as things were changing so quickly, people needed to quickly see was this information accurate? Was it up to date?
The other thing we did was look at the sections we have within LinkVan and different places we knew weren’t going to be open for a bit. For example, employment centres. We hid them so people weren’t getting overwhelmed with that information. We didn’t want the app to contribute to the sense of panic or the sense of worry that people might have.
And we added a COVID section and an overdose prevention section. Overdose prevention was getting tight: where to go for safe use, supplies, NARCAN kits, all of those things. We wanted to have those up for people quickly so they could find them easily. Those were the biggest changes we made and adapted to.
WB: Just the point I want to make again is it very much focuses on the context of the Downtown Eastside.
We’ve been invited to develop an app for example, in New Westminster. We won’t do that. We’ll provide them with mentoring—
DP: —and the backbone.
WB: Right, but we won’t do it for them because we don’t know their community and it needs to be developed in the community, by the community.
What have you learned about responding to a crisis from this experience?
DP: I think one of our biggest learnings was that you have to respond quickly. Because if you’re giving out information in a pandemic or these heightened situations, the wrong information can really not just upset somebody, it can also mean the difference between eating and not eating for the day. It’s really important to get it right and get it done quickly.
It also requires being very nimble. Our tech team was really great. Everybody sort of knew for the first month that we were all on short notice. If we needed to do something, everybody was willing to pitch in.
WB: I just think that timing is of the essence. I visit the app most days. Thanks to Karen and the Learning Exchange, the information was updated if not every day, every second day for a long period of time. Because what Dionne is saying is what we believe, and what the community needed, and what the community wanted.
DP: By everyone in the neighbourhood working together, it contributed to this sense of “OK, we can do this, because we have all the information together.” LinkVan is doing some of the work, but we’re supporting ourselves and others to continue doing the work that they’re doing. I think especially during the pandemic that’s important: groups and partnerships either strengthen or fall apart during those times.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Read more about the LinkVan project in the DTES RAP.
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Do you have questions or feedback about this article? Do you have an idea for the news section? Please email Community Engagement Librarian Nick Ubels at nick.ubels@ubc.ca
