RVs 4 MDs: giving frontline workers a place to stay

the nonprofit organization connects frontline workers with RVs to live in to keep them from exposing their families to COVID-19

FARGO, N.D. — The work of healthcare professionals and first responders has become more dangerous than ever before.

Maybe the most difficult part is that even when the day is done, those workers bring the threat of COVID-19 home with them and are left to have to find a way to keep their own loved ones safe.

This was the challenge that inspired RV’s for MD’s.

“We take somebody that has an RV that may be sitting idle and match them with a healthcare worker or first responder or somebody that is directly impacted by COVID,” says the organization’s co-founder Holly Haggard.

The idea came from Emily Phillips, a mom of three from the Dallas-area whose husband works as an ER doctor.  Phillips reached out to Facebook to see if anyone had an RV that her husband could live in outside of their family home. She was connected with Holly Haggard who was happy to lend the Phillips family a hand.

It wasn’t long before other families in need reached out looking for the same kind of help.

“The next day, Emily received more messages of doctors that needed a RV, so then she posted to her Facebook friends on her site. All of our friends would see those posts and then we would start sharing with our Facebook friends,” explained Haggard. “She sent me a text message and it was so funny because she was like ‘ I think this should be a thing.'”

Quickly, it became one.

In four weeks, RV’s for MD’s has gone international, matching over 1,000 frontline workers with others willing to give them a temporary home.

“There have been RV owners that have driven two, three, four hours to drop off their RV and camper and set it up and they let them use it for as long as they need. They are not charging any fees or anything like that,” says Haggard.

Aside from a place to stay, the organization has given frontline workers the chance to keep their family safe without having to be away from them.

“They can stay on their property and see their family everyday, but not go inside the house and expose their family to anything that they may have been exposed to at work,” says Haggard.

It’s in this way that RV’s for MD’s is keeping families together even as coronavirus threatens to break them apart.