Face Shields for Santa Cruz Covid-19 Workers

Fundraiser Status as of April 20, 2020

Thank you to everyone who has donated to our fundraiser. To say it has been a success is an understatement. Thanks to your donations we have been able to respond quickly and fulfill an urgent need. With your donations we are able to provide 5,000 face shields to workers in critical positions! 

As of today we are stopping donations to this fundraiser as we've been able to meet our original goal. Since we started this effort, other groups have been able to spin up and will provide longer duration support for those in need during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you would like to continue to support local efforts there are two places you might consider making a donation:

1) Covid-19 Local Response Fund by The Community Foundation Santa Cruz:

https://www.cfscc.org/funds/covid-19-local-response-fund 

2) Personal Protective Equipment for the Central Coast

https://www.ppe4cc.org/ 

We'll be continuing to deliver the 5,000 face shields over the next two weeks and we will post updates as we make deliveries.

Thank you again for your support. Santa Cruz is an amazing place. Your donations have made a difference.

Original Fundraiser Information

Tragically, our medical and health care providers are short of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) due to the Covid-19 virus outbreak. According to the best estimates available, our Santa Cruz and the surrounding areas are about 3 weeks away from the peak of the outbreak and those needing medical care. We all need to be prepared, especially those helping others.

A couple of us in our Santa Cruz neighborhood are engineers for local companies. We wanted to try and help with designing or making PPE for our local health care providers.

We've started by making an aerosol box that can be used during procedures such as intubation. We've delivered a prototype to Dominican Hospital and are building more for them and other area hospitals.

Understanding the desperate need, we wanted to do more. But spinning up manufacturing of shields or other gear was not feasible or time efficient for the coming need. We decided to see how we could source some protective gear and buy it for those in critical jobs.

In the current climate these shields are not easy to source. Through our "day job" connections with Chinese manufacturers, we have found a supplier of a basic face shield which can be worn by healthcare workers to help protect them when interacting with Covid-19 patients.

We need your help to get these shields in the hands of the workers quickly.

The cost for each face shield is about $5. We realize this price seems high for a simple shield. However, shipping from China right now is incredibly expensive as carriers are maxed out and China is supplying the world with this gear. We will get the best price we can to maximize the number of shields we can provide.

We would like to provide a minimum of 5,000 shields. We can have the shields in hand about a week after we place an order.

Our first point of donation will be Dominican Hospital. If we have excess shields we will donate to first responders and other care providers. 

We're a small town and we need to help take care of those who provide us with care. Every donation helps. Please consider that each $5 you can donate will help provide a shield for someone helping our family and friends who are sick. Let's keep our helpers healthy.

We plan to place an order in a week. Let's see how many shields we can provide. Time is critical right now.

We plan to take donations until Sunday April 5, 2020 at 5 pm. At that time we'll buy as many shields as possible with the donations we've received.

We'll update you once we place the order. Once the product is received and distributed we'll update you again.

Thank you for your support and helping those in this time of need.

Brian Peterson (Eastside Industries, SnapNrack) and Mike LeClair (Micro X-Ray, Inc.)