There’s no way around it, the pandemic is making it tough for absolutely everyone in so many different ways. On the bright side, I’ve found that businesses are showing an impressive amount of humanity, by providing access to free services. And others are making it easier for us to support the businesses we love, who are struggling themselves. Here are companies that are offering free services right now.
Free Resources for Kids
If you happen to have kids at home, chances are you’re looking for ways to keep them occupied when they’re not remote learning or being homeschooled by you.
- Scholastic Learn at Home is offering their lessons for free. You can choose activities based on grade level, including e-books and educational videos.
- Google is offering free museum virtual tours of more than 1,200 museums across the world through its Arts and Culture program.
- If your child likes to code, Educode Academy is offering free coding classes.
- And if they like to draw, Disney is offering free animation drawing classes.
Free Resources for Adults
On Classcentral.com, there’s a helpful list of free adult learning courses, including Coursera, which is offering 85 free certificate online courses, which Includes courses from universities such as Duke, CalTech, and Georgia Tech. Also on that same list are free courses from Rosetta Stone, if you wanted to learn a language, and there are free piano, guitar and photography lessons on offer as well.
Free Small Business Resources
If you are a small business, there are many free services being made available to you. For instance, the email marketing program, Mailchimp, is offering a free domain, worth $25. This discount is re-applied every year for five years as long as your website remains published on Mailchimp. GoDaddy is also offering free websites, in addition to access to free marketing resources, like the Small Business relief fund.
How to Help Your Local Businesses
And what about ways you can help your local businesses? A great way to do that is to purchase gift cards for when things open up again. GiftCardGranny.com, which is a site where you can find thousands of gift cards, has just launched a new program called LoveLocal, giving you access to gift cards from your favorite local merchants. Your purchase will give those businesses a much-needed influx of cash. Purchase the gift cards for yourself, or a friend who might need some cheering up.
Another good thing you can do to help your local merchants is to post positive Yelp reviews.
Stay well!
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