Living alone during the coronavirus pandemic has been less than ideal for many, but for 33-year-old Aaron Dent, the seclusion has fostered a sense of pride.
After having lived with his parents for nearly two years, Dent moved out to his own one-bedroom apartment in Sarasota in October, the first time he has lived on his own without roommates.
That milestone is one Dent said he could not have reached without the $800 assistance he received from Season of Sharing in November.
“Before this, I never actually lived on my own. So living by myself, it was all on me,” Dent said. “Coming home, it’s a relief or a sense of pride that I am making it work.”
As the onset of the devastating coronavirus pandemic is nearing its one-year mark, Jennifer Godsey is one who is still reeling in the wake of the financial damage she incurred last March.
For Godsey, life trucked along normally until March. By the middle of that month, restaurants were ordered to close on-site dining in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus.
The leisure and hospitality industry in the United States became one of the hardest-hit industries. By April, the country’s unemployment rate reached 14.7% – an all-time high in the country’s history of unemployment data, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 23 million people were left without work as the pandemic continued to spread.
Season of Sharing helps Bradenton woman get back on her feet
For months, Amanda Bywaters spent restless nights lying in bed, typing questions into Google and hoping the answers that popped up on the screen could put her mind at ease.
She searched for jobs. She searched for ways to find financial assistance for those affected by COVID-19. She hoped to find any bit of relief.
Bywaters, 35, said the “domino effect” of her financial struggles started in January of 2019. That is when she lost her job, her car was repossessed and she and her boyfriend then received a 24-hour eviction notice at their apartment in Sarasota days later.
With about a month left in the official Season of Sharing fundraising campaign, two local nonprofits have contributed to the fund that has acted as a community safety net in Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte and DeSoto counties for the last two decades.
The Manatee Community Foundation, a supporting agency to the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, and the Charlotte Community Foundation donated to the campaign in the final weeks of the year.
“The support of this critical network by our fellow community foundations, their boards of directors and individual donors speaks volumes about the trust there is for Season of Sharing to be a resource for families and individuals during their most challenging times,” Roxie Jerde, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, wrote in a prepared statement.
At its halfway mark, the 2020-2021 Community Foundation of Sarasota County’s Season of Sharing campaign is already looking like one for the record books, with more than $2.5 million in donations from the community and local foundations.
That’s already more than a then-record $2.4 million celebrated at a wrap-up event for the 2019-2020 campaign in late February. Additional donations brought that total past $2.5 million, and when the campaign was reactivated from March to July in response to the COVID-19 crisis, another record was set, with nearly $2.8 million raised, according to a chart provided by the Community Foundation.
If giving continues at anything near the pace seen so far, the 2020-2021 campaign will easily exceed that figure.