Deidre McCarty’s nonprofit organization, A Community of Caring Christians, has found a way to give back to the community amidst the pandemic through Covid testing. The group is made up of different citizens of Clarke County, but their new mission to help others was brought about by a vision and everything falling into place.
“My nonprofit is called A Community of Caring Christians. I originally started in 2010, but sometimes you have a vision for something and don’t know if you have the right timing for it, and it wasn’t the right timing for it. I didn’t move forward with it at the time and let it drop by the wayside,” explained Deidre. “Last year when the pandemic started, I had a vision where I had a glimpse of a person that I knew in full PPE gear at someone’s house, and they were standing at the door swabbing someone’s nose. At the time I thought that was a good idea but then didn’t think any more about it. That was mid-2020. I’m a field representative with the U.S. Census Bureau, and I was in a county nearby to Clarke County. When I went to this home, a little lady came to the door and asked me if I was there to give her the Covid vaccine. I told her no, but when she said it, I had that vision again. I came home and was thinking about it and got on my email a day later, and I saw an email saying that the National Institute of Health was soliciting for grants concerning Covid 19 testing.”
While she wasn’t successful on her first attempt to receive grant funding, Deidre remained diligent and was eventually prosperous.
“When I saw it, I had less than two weeks to put together a grant proposal and send it in. I made the deadline with about five minutes to spare, but the first round they sent me an email and told me that they weren’t going to fund me for that round but I’d have another opportunity. I received that denial on June 1 of this year, and they told me that my budget wasn’t in order according to their guidelines,” described Deidre. “In my eyes, I took that as a yes if I completed it and redid the budget, so that’s what I did. I made some changes to the budget and grant proposal, but everything we wanted to accomplish with the grant stayed the same. I resubmitted it three days ahead of time. We received the letter saying we were approved around late July.”
Now that she has received the grant, Deidre’s group is able to help those in the rural community who are unable to receive a Covid test when they need one. The groups who arrive at the home visits to help the individuals are properly trained for the job they are there to perform.
“The grant is supposed to go out to the rural areas and isn’t really for people in city limits. It’s for people in the rural parts of Clarke, Jasper, Wayne, Jones, and Lauderdale Counties. We have individuals who are trained to go to those homes that are in need of Covid testing,” proclaimed Deidre. “If they need to be Covid tested and can’t get out of their homes, feel like they’re too sick to leave home, or just don’t have any transportation or other means, we will go to those addresses and test them. We will sit in our vehicles for the 15 minutes that it requires for that test to finish, and then we will go back to their door in full PPE and give them the results of the test. We will also give them a flyer from the CDC concerning instructions on what to do if they have tested positive, and we’ll give them PPE like masks and gloves. We will leave them a second kit for them to retest themselves within 24 to 36 hours just in case the first test gave a false result. This is free of charge and will cost the people nothing.”
The group has hopes that in the future it will be able to partner with local hospitals and allow vaccines to be administered as well.
“It is our hope that we will be able to partner with a local hospital to be able to then go out to those people we have identified because we have to report to the state of Mississippi to the Department of Health and Human Services every positive test,” expressed Deidre. “We hope that if we can partner with the hospitals, then if any of the people want to be vaccinated, we at some point want to be able to have someone go out to those homes and vaccinate the people in their homes so that our vaccination numbers can also go up.”
At this time, the group is set to begin its home visit Covid testing on Monday, November 15 and will be operational until May 30, 2022. After that, they will have to reapply for more funding.
If anyone in the rural community is in need of a Covid test and unable to make it to a doctor’s office, simply call 601-274-2831 and provide the appropriate information so that the group can do a home Covid test.
