Nurses at the UCLA COVID-19 Unit
Recently, Random Acts spoke with organizer Michael Bleau to talk about Feed Hero Nurses, a new charity created through GoFundMe in order to support those fighting in the front lines against COVID-19.
Together, we are partnering with Michael in order to try and help feed these nurses!
Feed Hero Nurses all started thanks, Michael said, to one of the nurses stationed at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center. Sara Well, Michael’s friend and the founder of DropStat: an app to help emergency shifts get covered quickly and safely, told him of the units of nurses working tirelessly in the fight against the virus.
When Michael expressed his wish to help, Sara told him that what she really wished was that food could be delivered directly to nurses in the few minutes they have to eat, maybe through an app like Postmates. As primary caregivers and comforters to isolated COVID-19 patients, this would be a great way for nurses to conserve their bandwidth, and use their break time to rest and recharge. Following this encounter, Michael reached out to Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann on Twitter, and he replied immediately, offering to waive any delivery fees for the nurses.
All that was left was finding a business that would be willing to donate enough food—and to reach out to us and now they are good to go. He’s also grateful to digital media partner, Festivate, whose owner Amanda Cosenza has donated their social media and digital messaging services towards this project.
Feeding The Nurses
The first major company to get involved with feeding the nurses was Sweetgreen, which has donated over 175 meals for over 5 days and counting thanks to Haley Sedam and their Outpost team. Sweetgreen has really stepped up to feed hospital workers and medical personnel by delivering fresh salads and other healthy meals to nurses wherever they are located.
This has been an exceptionally great first step in the right direction.
“We have been sensitive about asking local restaurants to donate bulk meals as many of them are struggling to stay afloat with the current regulations,” Michael said. “But we would love to have our program support them where we can.”
Michael hopes that their generosity will be repeated with other corporations, or that they will allow them to buy more meals at discounted prices in order to feed more nurses.
Some of the Sweetgreen crew!
“If any local restaurants in Santa Monica have the capacity to prepare meals in 50 order batches and can sell them to us near our target cost of $10 per unit, please reach out,” said Michael. He can be reached at admin@feedheronurses.org for this effort.
How To Help
Feed Hero Nurses hopes to expand beyond UCLA Santa Monica and to working medical professionals across Los Angeles.
“If we have enough support, it would really be special to take this program to other cities heavily affected, through the peak of the COVID-19 situation,” Michael said. “Please donate personally if you are able via our Random Acts donation page and reach out if you have an interest as a corporate donor via funding or food (grocery chains and CPGs welcome!)”
With your help, FHN can expand past Los Angeles and even California to all the frontline nurses. If you know of any food chains that could get involved, please pass the information along to them and tell them to contact Michael at admin@feedheronurses.org. Or, if you have the money to donate now, please do so.
Random Acts is all about helping the helpers, and together, that’s what we can do for those that are willing to put their lives on the line for our own health and safety. Check out what else we are doing to help COVID-19 efforts.