Mayra Thomas-Romero was a CanVaxx team member for the first six months of the project, wrapping up her portion of work at the end of September. She began like everyone else during the first few months of the project with canvassing neighborhoods to spread information about COVID-19, testing, and the vaccines. After a few months, Mayra along with the rest of the CanVaxx team all found a specific community to target to spread the information and provide support to. This was believed to be the best interest of the project to better connect with Wyandotte County and its residents. Mayra chose to connect with the local businesses in our community, using her background and experience as a small restaurant owner to connect with and relate to managers and owners of these businesses. Throughout the project, Mayra did amazing things for this community of front-line workers and our community as a whole.
Utilizing Her Background to Form Connections
Mayra helps manage and operate a small restaurant in Wyandotte County that her parents originally opened over 15 years ago. Currently, there are about a dozen employees working in this restaurant, including her parents. Each employee made the decision to get their COVID-19 vaccine on their own accord, because they wanted to prioritize the safety of their coworkers, their community, and themselves. Mayra’s entire staff has weathered the storm of the pandemic on the front lines of it all. Though a restaurant may not seem like it’s part of the “front lines,” this restaurant along with several other businesses in our community couldn’t afford to shut down operations after the lockdown lifted in mid-2020, and they are constantly interacting with people, increasing their risk of getting sick.
As someone who helped manage and operate a business throughout the pandemic, Mayra saw that there was a general disparity among businesses that didn’t or couldn’t shut down. These businesses were full of front-line workers that Mayra wanted to connect with to find out who needed to be vaccinated or tested. A lot of these workers come from low-income households and communities and don’t have the ability to take off work and social distance if they were to become sick. They are the same people that are dealing with barriers with accessibility and misinformation when it comes to the pandemic and the vaccines. This was what Mayra wanted to help with by going to local businesses and offering free testing, mobile vaccine opportunities, and providing accurate information to workers and business owners.
Encouraging and Promoting Everyone’s Safety
Mayra’s biggest mission during the last few months of her participation in the project was to provide information and available resources rather than pushing the vaccines themselves. This was her way of reflecting on our community; she wanted to make sure that everyone had the proper knowledge to make an informed decision on their own rather than push them to do something they weren’t comfortable with. As she went around to businesses, she would highly encourage business owners to require the vaccine for their employees to ensure the safety and health of the employees themselves as well as the customers they would interact with. She would inform them of the long-term benefits of investing in their workers so that at the end of the day they could keep their doors open and their business running smoothly.
Mayra did amazing things within our community during this project by identifying a weak point that she could directly relate to as well as provide assistance and support to. The work that she did the last few months helped lead to higher vaccination and testing rates within many of our local businesses. The overall response she received from going around to businesses and neighborhoods was generally positive. This could be a direct result of how she approached those she spoke to. She came from a place of wanting to help our community rather than try to take away people’s autonomy and their right to make the decision on their own. She risked her own health and safety, especially being pregnant throughout her participation in the project, to provide our community with accurate information and available resources, and her hard work and contributions will be deeply appreciated for a long time.