Generous Europeans offer holiday homes to medical personnel

As a token of appreciation for their life-saving efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic

Most of us Europeans are very grateful to the medical personnel who have been making enormous efforts to battle the coronavirus for months on end. We have been applauding them from our windows and balconies every evening, we have sent numerous messages of appreciation throughout our cities, using places formerly meant for advertisement. But is this what medical staff will really need once the pandemic is over?

Heart-warming gestures for the front-line workers

Well, as important as appreciation and gratitude are, they can hardly replace a good and well-deserved holiday break. And since ordinary citizens don't actually boast the capacity to directly influence the remuneration of medical staff, someone came up with an interesting idea on how to help them spend the holiday season better.

As l’Essentiel.lu reported, an international voluntary operation, uniting no less than 22 countries, has set the objective to provide medical staff with a nice holiday vacation. In Belgium, this happens through an online platform under the slogan #youcarewecare where each willing citizen can list their secondary home, villa, vacation house, etc. for one or more weeks offering a free stay.

So far, more than 3,000 persons have joined the initiative and no less than 168 weeks of vacation stay have been offered, claims the Luxembourgish news outlet. At the initial stage, the organisers of the campaign collect applications from people willing to offer their homes, with a deadline for registration 30 June.

Upon registration, the property owners can decide to prioritize a particular hospital in Belgium. Then, the directors of the selected hospitals will be invited to choose at random which front-line workers will be offered a stay. The platform #youcarewecare will coordinate the process and has prepared a contract to regulate the relationship between the owner and the guest.

If you have a cosy place to offer, learn how to participate via the website or start your own local initiative. Hopefully, free travel will soon be reallowed in Europe and we will still manage to go on our traditional annual sunny vacations as they lie before us.