Kindness In The Time Of Covıd

From making face masks for hospitals to making music to entertain neighbours, the COVID-19 crisis is sparking countless acts of generosity. Here are stories from around the world

- Tim Hulse

Jaime Coronel is not a doctor or a nurse. He hasn’t saved any lives or invented a vaccine. He’s an ordinary member of the public. But in his own way, like many others around the world, he helped to improve the lives of others during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Altruism takes many forms, as this year has shown, but it largely stems from a simple desire to help make things better. Indirectly, good deeds can also bring meaning to our lives in times of crisis and can make us feel a greater sense of connection with others, especially when we are starved of company. Jaime’s story is one of many examples. A technical architect, who runs his family removal company in Puertollano, Spain, Jaime was cleaning out the storage room at home in the early days of lockdown when he came across a fancy-dress costume of Olaf, the goofy snowman from the Walt Disney fantasy film Frozen.

“I thought to myself, ‘Let’s do something silly,’” he says, laughing as he recalls the day. “So I put it on. And when my four-year-old daughter Mara saw me, she asked to put on her costume of Elsa, the princess in the film. We spent all day hanging out dressed as characters from Frozen.”