By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher
The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint would like to take this opportunity to not only thank you for your continued support and allowing us to serve you during this very difficult time for everyone. We thought it important to also take a moment to highlight a few of our efforts during this pandemic.
As you might know, we have now placed the newspaper online each week, free of charge. This allows greater reach and timely receipt of the information we are providing in partnership with the County of San Diego’s Health and Human Services Agency, as well as information from the Governor and local municipalities in San Diego County. We realize that many in our community are not on the internet for a variety of reasons.
We are also placing over 2000 copies of the newspaper each week in food distribution bags and boxes, at no charge, to ensure that those who need information most have access to it. We are monitoring the testing sites such as Tubman/Chavez where numbers have increased since we spoke to the County about initial low response when they opened as a “State” testing site. The County quickly switched locations, making Tubman/Chavez a county testing site under a countywide public health order by Dr. Wilma Wooten which made it possible for everyone to do walk up testing without calling for a doctor’s prescription. The site has been so successful that now the issue is getting enough testing supplies.
We have also partnered with the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation as a resource center, the information of which can be found on their billboard at Market Creek. We could not make our newspapers available each week if it were not for the volunteers and workers at My Brother’s Keeper, Mosque # 8, Paving Great Futures, 5K Hip Hop Wellness Project, Community First Responders, Strike Force, East County Feeding America efforts, Bethel Baptist Church food distribution, First Methodist of Chollas View, New Paradise Church and New Life Church. As well as George Stevens Senior Center twice a month.
We are trying to highlight Black and African businesses in our community so that we may spend with them when possible during this economic downturn. We continue to welcome and cover your stories, celebrate your triumphs and help mourn your losses. We are moving toward daily online postings on our website and we invite you to use our Facebook Community Events page to give notice of your events. If you do not advertise the events with the newspaper, your items will be removed from the Events page. It is not a substitute for advertising with the newspaper. We still have production and distribution costs and we are not a nonprofit organization and, therefore, do not receive any nonprofit grants.
The newspaper is an essential service and, as such, we are open internally. This means we receive at the door notices and payments and we continue to publish weekly since we are a legal newspaper. We can be reached online, or by phone, Monday through Thursday from 9:30 till 3:30pm.
We salute our many volunteers and we urge you to stay prayerful and stay safe.
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