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Willow Grove CDC

Thursday, December 16, 2021
Location: Willow Grove, Montgomery County

Org Focus: Affordable rental housing

Grant Funding: COVID education & vaccine clinics

Website: willowgrovecdc.org

 

Click here to download a PDF of this profile.


Based on an interview with Jerome Mitchell, Executive Director

This is a difficult environment to be successful in. From the time the pandemic hit, there’s been so much confusion, so many missteps — it’s created one big mess. Citizens’ mistrust of government is so strong, and all the mishandling confirms the mistrust. And that’s on top of the divisiveness of our society.


Our biggest goal is to get people vaccinated. At this point, the majority of people who want to be vaccinated have been vaccinated. So any jab we get is a high success.

People have as many reasons for not wanting to get vaccinated as there are people. Many are really internally divided. Part of them wants to do it, part of them feels pressure from our society to do it, but there’s still a part of them that won’t let them do it.

All you can do is continue to have conversations and be encouraging. Have open dialogue with them, share as much information as you have, try to break up myths.

With all this mistrust, it’s more important than ever to have people on the ground involved in decision-making, involved in the allocation of resources. When there’s no connection, when information comes from someone far away, the more people resist. We need to have as much input as possible from the community.