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https://scmp.com/lifestyle/article/3076720/coronavirus-acts-kindness-jack-ma-and-chelsea-soccer-club-local-facebook
Lifestyle

Coronavirus acts of kindness: from Jack Ma and Chelsea soccer club to local Facebook groups, it’s not all doom and gloom

  • While the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the ugly side of humanity, many have stepped up to help people cope better
  • Studies show that being kind to others helps us feel better about ourselves
Street cleaners in Hong Kong wait in line to receive free face masks amid the coronavirus outbreak. Photo: EPA-EFE

When Ovidiu Olea had problems ordering face masks for his Hong Kong staff in January, his entrepreneurial – and philanthropic – instincts kicked in.

The Romanian banker turned businessman, who is the founder and chief executive of Hong Kong-based fintech company Valoot, was told there was a supply shortage. Coincidentally, he had just read an article in medical journal The Lancet, written by doctors in the Chinese city of Wuhan – where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported – warning governments around the world to brace for a shortage of masks.

Sensing the impending emergency, Olea started looking for an overseas supplier. He placed an order for 500,000 masks from South Africa for his staff and for sale through an e-store on the Chinese social media app WeChat. To ensure their safe passage from the factory near Durban to an airport in Johannesburg, a roughly 10-hour journey, he hired six armed guards and a three-vehicle convoy.

Soon after, the Hong Kong government asked if he could source for masks and hand sanitisers for them. Olea arranged a 58-tonne delivery through a private cargo charter flight from Romania.

Ovidiu Olea.
Ovidiu Olea.

Olea also saw how a mask shortage would affect Hong Kong’s poorer residents, prompting him to donate more than 50,000 of them – as well as protective equipment – to street cleaners in Hong Kong, distributed through the Cleaning Workers Union. He also donated masks to the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital.

“There was no way I was going to profit off masks for kids,” he says.

Karma motivated his good deed. “I’ve lived in Hong Kong for six years and this city has been good to me, so I wanted to give back.”

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the ugly side of humanity, fuelling fear and race-related violence and xenophobia around the globe. In Australia, police were called in to patrol supermarkets as panic buying stripped shelves of essential items. Fights over toilet rolls broke out in the aisles.

But amid the doom and gloom have emerged acts of kindness, such as Olea’s.

Some supermarkets in Australia introduced “elderly hour” to allow older people and those with disabilities to shop without crowds.

Jack Ma, co-founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, donated millions of face masks and test kits to each of the 54 countries in Africa to combat the outbreak, while Britain’s Chelsea soccer club made the Millennium Hotel at its London stadium available to the country’s National Health Service to accommodate staff fighting the pandemic. (Alibaba owns the Post.)

Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma donated millions of face masks and test kits to African countries. Photo: Bloomberg
Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma donated millions of face masks and test kits to African countries. Photo: Bloomberg

In fashion, luxury conglomerate LVMH is producing hand sanitiser that will be donated to health authorities, while Moncler donated 10 million (US$10.8 million) to build 400 intensive care units, with lung ventilators to keep people breathing, for a hospital in Milan.

Influencers have also got in on the act. Italian fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni, who has over 19 million Instagram followers, helped raise 4 million for Italy’s coronavirus fight.

While acts of kindness can polish a company’s image, they can also help the individuals who perform them, studies say.

A 2016 study by Britain’s University of Oxford found that being kind to others causes a small but significant improvement in subjective well-being. In other words, when we are kind to others, we feel better about ourselves.

In January, researchers at Princeton University in the US released a study that found altruistic behaviour can relieve physical pain.

The coronavirus outbreak has also rallied online communities, a shining example of which can be seen on the Hong Kong Moms Facebook page.

When the Hong Kong government announced this month that anyone arriving from overseas would have to undergo home quarantine for 14 days and be subject to another two weeks of medical surveillance, many of the page’s 65,000 members went into support overdrive, offering help including food deliveries and sharing advice about quarantine measures.

In Poland, a Facebook group Widzialna Reka (“Visible Hand”) sprang up, offering support for those in self-quarantine. Its membership soon swelled to 80,000 members, with people offering services from dog walking to online classes for children.

Support groups act as a bridge allowing members to share their experiences and offer emotional and moral support, the US-based Mayo Clinic says. And the benefits – from feeling less lonely and isolated to reducing depression and anxiety, as well as getting practical feedback – are appreciated more than ever in difficult times.

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