Masks for Masks, Sponsored by Soft

Doctors and nurses in New York are running out of masks (both surgical & N95) that are critical to keeping them—and us—safe. Many nurses have been given 1 single-use mask to reuse for the foreseeable future; others were not given a mask at all. ER doctors don’t know if they’ll have a mask to protect them when they come in for work each day. And in between shifts, doctors and nurses do not have a mask to wear on their commute home, which puts them at greater risk.

Our medical community is on the front lines of this crisis and should not be expected to compromise their health this way. This is not the job they “signed up for,” and the fact that hospitals are not taking care of their staff is incredibly disappointing.  New York's government is placing massive orders for masks, but it's still not going to be enough, and in the meantime, doctors and nurses are going into work feeling unprotected and scared.

And here's the thing: There are thousands, if not millions, of masks out there, especially overseas (like in China, where masks are no longer needed).  So we're gathering as many masks as we can to give  healthcare professionals that we know personally (family members, close friends, etc.), who can also distribute them to other doctors and nurses in their units. Designers in New York are sharing masks they received from their factories in Asia, and we have friends in China and South Korea sending boxes of extra masks, too.

The purpose of this GoFundMe is to raise money to cover the cost of buying + shipping masks from overseas and locally, and 100% of proceeds will be used for N95 and surgical masks. We plan to obtain as many masks as possible, and to ensure we’re not exacerbating the current situation, we are working with manufacturers with the capacity to fill  private orders as well as hospital/government orders down the line.

Anything helps, whether you can donate $1 or $5,000. If you have masks to donate, please let us know and we can get them in the right hands!  We've already identified a distributor with an order arriving to NYC in coming days, with excess capacity to meet our initial demands. Please let us know if you have any other leads on manufacturers or distributors.

Once we receive our shipment from abroad, we will be distributing masks directly to healthcare workers in need who include family members and friends working at NYU, Columbia, Rutgers, Elmhurst, Greenwich, Bronxcare, Maimondes, North Shore University Hospital, Staten Island University Hospital North, among other hospitals in the tri-state area and similar organizations like NYC PPE and Mask a Hero. Considering this is a grass-roots effort, please feel free to make introductions to healthcare workers in the area, and we can add them to our distribution effort. 

This GoFundMe has been produced in partnership with Soft (www.besoft.nyc), which is our recently founded skincare company that currently sells moisturizing masks for cosmetic purposes (hence masks for masks). To show our support we're donating 100% of profits generated by Soft for the foreseeable future to this cause directly, and are rolling out a series of events to further spread awareness. For background information, we're a New York City based team, and are doing our best to help out those in our local community. Please note that because Soft is not a 501(c) nonprofit organization, this campaign is being conducted at the individual level, and our co-founder Patrick Dolezal will be personally withdrawing 100% of funds to purchase masks abroad. Given our options and limited time, this was the most expeditious route to take. 


 

Thank you!

Emily Farra, Patrick Dolezal, and James O'Dwyer