Recently, a friend of mine had to undergo back surgery. The surgery would incapacitate her in the short term and require a long-term recovery program before life “returns to normal.” But the bigger problem was that she is also a caregiver to her husband who is battling Parkinson’s Disease.

How were they going to manage this?

This post is about how this couple’s community of friends stepped in with the help of a social platform that just blew me away: Lotsa Helping Hands.

A free-of-charge, private, web-based community you can use to organize family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues – a family’s ‘circles of community’ — during times of need. Easily coordinate activities and manage volunteers with our intuitive group calendar. Communicate and share information using announcements, messages boards, and photos.

It was amazing. LotsaHelpingHands.com provided a complete online solution to coordinating support and sharing support tasks across their network of friends. Not only did this site benefit my friend and her husband, but it provided clear and easy access for all of their friends who wanted to help them out.

It was a win-win for everyone.

Anyone who is a caregiver, knows caregivers, coordinates volunteers, cares for the elderly, is helping out new parents or parents in crisis, or anyone who is a part of a community supporting military families when soldiers are deployed can benefit from a social site like this. School organizers could use it, too, to organize classroom activities, fundraising events and more.

There are a multitude of applications that can be more easily managed with this truly helpful platform.

I didn’t imagine using “social media” in this way. So incredibly glad someone else did.