Alongside is open and operating our regularly scheduled programs with COVID-19 protocols.

At Alongside, we acknowledge that measures to prevent COVID transmission, and adherence to certain of these measures, such as mask wearing and vaccination, have been controversial topics. 
 
Our desire is to maintain a safe and effective environment of community healing. Thus we are engaging in things like disinfecting all public areas daily, installing highly effective air-purification systems in all buildings, encouraging individual risk mitigation (e.g., 20-second hand washing), and monitoring the health of everyone on campus.
At times, the values of safety and program effectiveness can be in tension with each other, and must be balanced. We may require indoor masking during certain periods of high local virus transmission or when COVID is identified on our campus. At other times we may leave masking up to individual preference, noting therapeutic value to the ability to see each other’s faces. At all times, we encourage mutual respect and absence of judgment toward each other’s masking decisions.
Those we desire to serve come from areas of the world which may not have ready COVID vaccine availability. Alongside has chosen neither to require COVID vaccination as a condition of program participation, nor to inquire about the COVID vaccination status of its staff or program participants.

Updated: 12/21/2021

View our Draft Alongside Communicable Disease Community Risk Reduction Strategy 2.5.