In my view, although we had to maintain a safe distance, we now needed social closeness to support and care for people who are vulnerable - not social distancing.
Within a week an international campaign, “Mind the Gap”, was started by the international foundation FGIP together with Vytautas Magnus University. In no time it went viral and spread around the globe and is now supported by fifty international and national organizations as far away as South-Africa and India, as well as by some fifty well-known personalities. The visuals of the campaign are now available in forty languages, from Amharic (Ethiopian) to Zulu and from Urdu to Albanian. The main slogan of the campaign is “No to social distancing; yes to physical distancing and social solidarity”.
Also, in Lithuania, the campaign has managed to galvanize a lot of support. It is supported by more than ten organizations, most of them related to mental health issues, but it now also includes the LRT press agency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The minister Linas Linkevičius is one of the “ambassadors” of the campaign.
Lithuania has taken the lead in dealing with the mental health aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only because of its strong support for the Mind the Gap campaign but also because the government immediately responded to the call by the UN Secretary-General in his policy brief titled “COVID-19 and the Need for Action on Mental Health” by providing funding to hire an extra 200 psychologists to help deal with the mental health effects of the pandemic. Earlier, it sent large amounts of personal protection equipment to Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. And now the Foreign Ministry officially supports a call focused on social solidarity and physical distancing, while the first media organization has already promised to change its vocabulary. This week Lithuania shows that while being small, it can also be significant.
Prof. Robert van Voren, Director of the Andrei Sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development at Vytautas Magnus University
