As Miami continues to battle the COVID-19 crisis, local nonprofits get a PPE boost
Braving a summer downpour, volunteers with local health foundations distributed personal protection equipment Saturday to 42 nonprofit organizations dedicated to South Florida’s coronavirus recovery.
The event was organized by partners including The Miami Foundation, Health Foundation of South Florida and Florida Blue Foundation that secured PPE items in bulk. The 42 nonprofits received a three-month supply of PPE each, said The Miami Foundation President and CEO Rebecca Fishman Lipsey. Bulk items for pickup included 56,000 masks, 240 no-touch thermometers, 292 gallons of sanitizer and 5,000 face shields.
Lipsey said the selected nonprofits are all on the “front lines” of Miami’s pandemic recovery efforts.
“We have a crisis on our hands here in Miami, a health crisis and a community crisis,” Lipsey said. “We need to make sure that the organizations that are helping Miami recover are safe themselves so that they can be at work doing all the things they do.”
Lipsey said that government-sponsored PPE distribution events have focused on getting PPE and other needed resources into the hands of individuals, especially those living in hotspots. But she said nonprofits, specifically those with 50 employees or less who are priced out of buying PPE in large volumes at lower prices, also need protective gear.
“We called all of our friends and partners and said nonprofit organizations are getting overcharged right now,” Lipsey said. “They’re buying things by the box when they’re small organizations and we need to be buying things by the truck and getting the kind of pricing that large corporations get.”
The nonprofit organizations picked up their supplies via a drive-thru set up by Health in the Hood and Urban Philanthropies at Overtown’s The Urban between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Organizations were given a 10-minute window during which they could swing through and pick up their supplies, loaded into their cars by volunteers running in and out of the rain hoisting stuffed cardboard boxes.
Alex Mitter, 24, saw the drive-thru advertised on Health in the Hood’s Instagram and decided to spend her morning and early afternoon volunteering. The seventh-grade civics teacher said that the rain didn’t really affect her day.
“It’s definitely annoying because the boxes are kind of falling apart, but other than that it’s not been that big of a deal,” Mitter said.
Baldwin Davis, the director of operations for Gang Alternative — which is dedicated to building character through community programs — said that more essential items have started to become available for purchase. But he added that the drive-thru supplies are still a huge boost because Gang Alternative intends to provide services “for the long haul” as Miami continues to battle the crisis created by COVID-19.
“Everybody’s going through the whole problem of the pandemic, and we have continued services throughout and this is a huge help and a boost for our staff and for you know, our families to make sure that we can continue to just provide services in the community,” Davis said. “We’re looking ahead at what’s to come and making sure we have enough supplies to last for even the upcoming school year and so on.”
The partners at Saturday’s event also made a bulk donation to the organization Mujer, which distributed the PPE to migrant farm workers in Homestead.
Lipsey said the distribution was made possible by donations to the Community Recovery Fund, which has invested more than $2.8 million in pandemic relief, according to a press release from The Miami Foundation. Lipsey added there will be future donation events as resources become available.