Truck Two Arrives at New Hope Baptist Church
The second 53-foot truck rolled into Newark on Wednesday morning. Volunteers unloaded the 44,000 pounds of supplies into New Hope Baptist Church to be distributed to those in need.
A Big Thank You to Home Depot
We wanted to thank the generous folks at Home Depot for the donation of buckets full of tarps, bleach, hammers, screwdrivers, LED lanterns, batteries, work gloves, and other supplies for re-building. Dan Barry was kind enough to drop off all the supplies to our Kirkwood Commons location so we could load them in the truck and send them to New Jersey!
Fox 2 News Features #STLforSANDY
Thanks Fox 2 News, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
91,000+ Pounds of Donations
St. Louis really came through with donations for the #STLforSANDY campaign. I know we’ve said a lot of thank-you’s, but we’re going to keep going because we think the community as a whole has done an amazing job and we’re not finished telling you that!
On Monday the second 53-foot truck left St. Louis and is currently being unloaded in Newark at The New Hope Baptist Church. With 44,000 pounds of donations on board, that’s a total of almost 91,000 pounds of supplies donated by St. Louisans. At the last minute three particular donors came through with pallets full of items, filling truck number two to the brim. VIJON supplied six pallets of Germ-X, K-Mart added a pallet of bottled water, and Warehouse of Fixtures sent along tables and chairs.
City to City, Mayor to Mayor
As #STLforSANDY came together, one of the first calls we made was to Mayor Slay’s office here in the city of St. Louis. We wanted to ensure that all the donations would go directly to the Hurricane Sandy victims greatest need. As Switch was coordinating all of the partners and logistics for the initiative, Mayor Slay’s office made the direct outreach to Mayor Booker’s office in Newark. Thanks to the City of St. Louis and the Mayors office, we were able to coordinate our tractor-trailer sized donations directly to the residents the city of Newark. The Mayor to Mayor connection gave us and all the #STLforSANDY donors the confidence that our efforts would be helping the most in need. #STLforSANDY originated with the simple idea of one community helping another, mission accomplished!
Unloading the donations with Mayor Booker in the City of Newark at New Hope Baptist Church
St. Louis Pitching In
Over the span of just two days, we were able to fill two 53-foot trucks and send them to Newark, New Jersey. The City of St. Louis really mobilized for this campaign, giving us a prime spot at Soldiers Memorial in Downtown St. Louis and allowing all 30 St. Louis City Fire Stations to collect donations. Without the help of the Veiled Prophet Community Service Foundation in organizing the pick up of the boxes from the Fire Stations, it would not have been possible to collect as much as we did.
The people of St. Louis filled thousands of boxes, all generously donated by the Loy Lange Company. Local companies like Warehouse of Fixtures made donations in the hundreds, while others like Home Depot donated by the truck full. The effort put forth from the St. Louis community in just a few days to help out the victims of Hurricane Sandy has been incredible.
Stuffing the Trucks
St. Louis, you are one generous city.
We cannot say enough thanks to the entire community for their efforts in stuffing the #STLforSANDY trucks.
Thanks to the hundreds of people who came out to donate items over the last two days. Whether it was a grocery bag or an entire shopping cart full of needed items, the support was unbelievable. In total, we managed to fill two trucks with supplies to send to the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Companies like Nawgan and Lowes donated goods by the pallet-full. Citi employees sent 500 blankets to one of our trucks, while RK Stratman unloaded 3,000 t-shirts and sweatshirts. Kipz Transportz filled a 24 foot trailer with donations, drove it to the Kirkwood Commons location, and stuffed it all into our truck. Community groups in surrounding areas also pitched in. The folks at the Balvihar of STL school donated 1,200 cans collected at a food drive, and Girl Scout Troop 2962 collected items outside of the Troy Wal-Mart, filling nine carts in just three hours on Friday night.
It would not have been possible to collect everything if it were not for our volunteers. People like Terry, showed up at Kirkwood Commons on Friday to donate and stayed to volunteer through Saturday afternoon and the Kirkwood Fire Department who did a lot of heavy lifting packing all the boxes into the trailer.
The first truck is heading to New Jersey right now filled with 48,000 pounds of supplies and that is all because of you, St. Louis.
