Beginning in early October, Susan Weston, an administrator for the “Boyle County KY Help and Support” Facebook group who regularly shares COVID-19 statistics on the page, started distributing yard signs she designed, which read, “Vaccinate to protect our neighbors. Please get your shots! Visit vaccine.gov for places to get COVID-19 shots. Support our schools and our hospitals,” featuring what she described as a “Kentucky light up your house green” shade of green.

One of the signs is prominent in Weston’s own yard, and a green lamp gleams from her window to show awareness and solidarity to those affected by COVID-19. She got the signs produced by Minuteman Press in Danville.

“I wish our whole community had more forms of mobilization to fight this virus,” she said.

She said she began the yard sign initiative herself because the city and county governments hadn’t taken it up, “and one day I looked out and thought, ‘I can do this.’”

She got the first batch of the signs, which she’s working on distributing with help. She promotes the signs on Facebook and gives them to people for free. They’re not all gone yet, but some people have donated money to her for their signs, which she plans on using for more signs should the demand arise.

“It’s just a ‘Somebody should do it’ project,” she said.

Later, she said, “It’s straightforwardly an effort to make it more visible, that lots of us care about it.”

She said though the majority of adults in Boyle County have been vaccinated, her focus now is to raise awareness, particularly to people who might still be hesitant, of how COVID-19 is impacting children not yet vaccinated, and hospitals. The sign emphasizes protecting schools and hospitals, “Because that’s where choices individual adults make turn up to affect other people in our community,” she said.

There are about 14 signs out around the county now, and she wants to distribute another round soon.

About what she sees as the power of yard signs to impact individual action, she said she believes yard signs allow visibility that there are many people in the community who care deeply about vaccinations.

For those who haven’t been vaccinated, she said “I think there are still a whole set of people who are puzzling to try to figure it out, especially if they don’t feel comfortable on the internet or if they don’t have a sense of how to sort out which sources to trust. I think there’s still plenty of confusion. And for those folks, a showing of, lots of people are confident, would help.”

Later, she said, “There’s room to think with respect about people who haven’t chosen it yet and try to keep encouraging them.”

Weston said she’s “stunned that I’m the one doing this,” and believes city and county governments, as well as the community as a whole, could be doing more to promote vaccination.

“We are peppy, exciting, innovative, pull-together Danville,” she said. “We can do more than we’re doing. So this is me being the Danville that I want it to be.”