Hand Sanitizer and Health-Care Packages For The Homeless
We put the call out on our Facebook page for our members and community to help us protect the most vulnerable among us. Our goal was to produce hand sanitizer and pass it out at local homeless shelters and organizations that help the homeless. We wanted to keep our friends and community safe by stopping the spread of COVID-19 in any way we could.
A Northern Indiana Atheists member researched, tested, and was making hand sanitizer that met CDC recommendations. We intended to use the money raised to buy supplies to produce personal-sized bottles.
We put up $150 of NIA money to match donations, hoping to hit a $300 goal. In under 24 hours, we had hit that goal. We immediately ordered our first batch of hand sanitizer and sourced 8 oz. bottles with pop open caps from a local small business. And two days later we were bottling.
The NIA member only charged us for materials he needed to make the hand sanitizer. And the local small business not only charged us their cost for the bottles and caps, they also donated 50 bars of amazing handmade soap. Our first batch of 100 bottles was filled; all we had to do was label them and send them on their way.
Just one week after the fundraiser had started, we were delivering our first batch of hand sanitizer. A second NIA member handled all the transportation of the large batches and small bottles. A third NIA member saw to it that the sanitizers made it into the right hands. Over 100 hand sanitizers were distributed to people who are homeless in South Bend—that’s nearly 8 gallons of hand sanitizer.
On April 4, Michiana Five for the Homeless posted to their Facebook page: “A big thank you and shout out to the Northern Indiana Atheists, who made 117 bottles of hand sanitizer for the homeless and distributed it yesterday. Thank you for always being there to support the homeless.”
On April 7, we started bottling our second batch to donate to our homeless community members. We also had a large container to donate to a local shelter for staff use.
Realizing the community had donated more than we could spend on just hand sanitizer, we started looking into making health-care packages for our homeless community with additional needed items.
After speaking with several homeless advocates on exactly what was needed, we started sourcing other much needed health-care items, including kleenex, toothbrushes and toothpaste, snacks, socks, triple antibiotic cream and bandaids, soap, chapstick, face masks, fingernail trimmers, advil, and bathing wipes.
On April 21, NIA delivered 25 health-care packages to Operation TreeHouse in Goshen. Operation TreeHouse is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the homeless. We’ve worked with them in the past and are confident that these health-care packages will get to people who need them. On May 4, NIA took 75 health-care packages to South Bend to be passed out to our friends who are homeless. Altogether, we bottled and donated over nine gallons of hand sanitizer and 100 health-care packages directly to people who are homeless in South Bend, Elkhart, and Goshen.
We ended up raising $1,340 of our initial goal of $300. We obviously underestimated the generosity and passion of our members and our community to help out where they can. We were happy to see them agree it is important to protect the most vulnerable among us. The entire NIA board says a heartfelt thank you to everyone who donated.
Northern Indiana Atheists is a nonprofit established to fight state/church violations on a local level and defend the rights of atheists and other marginalized communities across Northern Indiana.
Membership is open to atheists and our allies who share our vision for a government that represents all citizens equally and our passion for serving our community. Your membership and donations amplify our voice and makes our impact even stronger. Become a member today at NorthernIndianaAtheists.com.