Photo: Contributed

Virtual town hall in Penticton will address how local charities, organizations are dealing with COVID-19

A Penticton foundation is hoping to spread information about community services through a weekly online town hall.

The first Community Foundation of the South Okanagan Similkameen virtual meeting will take place April 1 at 2 p.m.

"We're going to just try and give everybody the sense of what's going on with some of the big institutions in the area, just a sense of how they are changing their strategies and how that is going to affect the community that they serve," said executive director Aaron McRann. 

Residents can watch the live video feed and submit questions.

"The first one is going to be an overall assessment of where the community is at, where the region is at in terms of the key charities and institutions," McRann said.

"We have a list of probably 15 or 20 speakers at this point who are willing to step up and talk about what's going on ... There's no need to download any software or anything like that, you just follow the link and as long as you have internet connection it will allow you to join."

Five to six speakers will talk for five minutes each, then the floor will open for virtual questions. 

"People will be allowed to submit questions. People already registered will get a message today asking them to submit questions in advance as well," McRann explained.

He hopes to make the event a weekly occurence, likely every Wednesday at 2 p.m. 

The webinar will be visible on Facebook here or through their website here.