Invisible Hands drew nearly 7,000 volunteers in just over a week, said Liam Elkind, a junior at Yale University and one of its creators. “People need food now, and we are trying to get them food as quickly as possible,” he said.
By Monday, Invisible Hands volunteers had delivered groceries and other goods to more than 250 homes. Mr. Elkind said recipients slide cash under the door to the volunteers, who sanitize the bags they are delivering. The service asks volunteers to follow guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and to wear gloves and clean their delivery baskets.
After Mr. Elkind delivered groceries to one woman in her 70s, he said, she invited him in for cookies and tea. “I said, ‘No, this is the opposite of what this is about!’ The whole point is we are minimizing physical contact.’”
Organizations that bring food to homebound people, such as God’s Love We Deliver, City Harvest, and Citymeals on Wheels, have said that while demand has increased recently, the volunteer pool has shrunken, in part because volunteers are usually older New Yorkers.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, has encouraged people to create mutual-aid networks in their buildings or blocks — creating “pods” of neighbors — to bridge the gap.
“It’s really important because we can choose to share instead of hoard,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said on a recent call to promote the idea. Would-be helpers were encouraged to grocery shop during off-peak hours and to avoid public transit and face-to-face exchanges, tips her office said were consistent with the city’s public health guidance. A “tool kit” that was distributed after the call also suggests that people avoid touching doorbells with their fingers.
In Brooklyn, Emily Claypoole has taken such precautions when she shops for her neighbor, Mr. Hamel. They knew each other in college but ended up in the same Bedford-Stuyvesant building by coincidence last year, she said. Now, they are connected in ways neither could have imagined.
