October 29 Donation of gloves, garbage bags, disinfectant cleaners to victims of Hurricane Sandy in Union Ocean Township.

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East coast of the United States heavily. It was the strongest and fiercest storms of the east coast in the past 100 years. After the hurricane, there were over 7.5 million people who lost power. New Jersey was one of the states which suffered serious damage by Hurricane Sandy.

Since the majority of Caretohelp Foundation’s members live in New Jersey, most of our members and volunteers were affected by Hurricane Sandy. Many of us were out of power until November 7th, but we knew that there are even more families who had lost their houses and desperately needed help. Board members discussed this situation and made two resolutions. First, we decided to start raising donations for victim families via email and newspaper solicitations. Second, the foundation decided to allocate $25,000 of our reserved funds to support the expense for future distribution programs.

Ann Wang started to contact different townships in South Jersey to find out where and what victim families needed. After an extensive search, she got in connection with Ms. Jennifer Maier in Union Beach Township.

Jennifer told Ann that they need clearing kits such as rubber gloves, garbage bags and heavy duty cleaner. SueSue Yang and Jennifer Lin started to search for clearing kits suppliers and attempted to get better deals for these items. After we talked with the manager of G&B Janitoral supply, she was willing to give us a discounted price for these items and donate some of these items to us as well. SueSue ordered 1,000 pairs of rubber gloves, 5,600 heavy duty garbage bags and 40 gallons of heavy duty cleaners from G&B. The total cost of the order was $2,400, and G&B agreed to deliver all the goods free of charge to the townhouse of Union Beach (650 Pool Ave., Union Beach NJ) on 11/10 at 9:30AM.

SueSue Yang and 6 other volunteers met at the Union Beach Townhouse at 9:00AM. This was one of the FEMA locations in Union Beach, where many other organizations and donors were also gathering. We reported to Ms. Jennifer Maier, and she then assigned us each a location where we could dole out our donations. She also asked us to help distribute Red Cross kits to needy families. At 9:30AM, G & B’s truck arrived, volunteers loaded all goods to our location, and we began to distribute our donations to the victim families. We stayed until 4:00PM and distributed to approximately 150 families.

November 15 Donation of gloves, garbage bags, disinfectant cleaners to FEMA center in Hazlet. (150 units)

On November 15, 2012 Caretohelp Foundation conducted a distribution in the Township of Hazlet. Got in contact with FEMA coordinator to set up a meeting date and to find out what they needed. What they needed urgently was still cleaning kits. So another 400 cleaning kits (rubber gloves, garbage bag, scrub sponge, disinfectant cleaner) were ordered from G & B again on 11/12. All goods were to be delivered on 11/13, packed everything in 400 separate bags on 11/13, and loaded up goods on 11/14. 150 cleaning kits were delivered to FEMA’s service center in Hazlet. The other 250 were delivered to the Highlands Township on 11/17.

November 17 Donation of 250 cleaning kits to Highlands Township.

On November 17, 2012 we started our 3rd distribution program in Highlands Township. We got in touch with the township administrator Tim Hill and volunteer coordinator Mrs. Patty Park to set up the date and what they need. 250 sets of cleaning kits were prepped and SueSue Yang and 5 other volunteers met at 9:00AM 11/17 to distribute. We were assigned a spot to set up our donation cleaning kits along with many other organizations that also provided all kinds of assistance. Tim Hill met us on the spot, telling us 50% of the houses (more than 1200 houses) in town were damaged because this town is close to the Atlantic Ocean. Many houses still don’t have power because the electric meter was damaged by the flood. Tim brought us to the shelter to meet with the Red Cross manager Mrs. Michelle Marsha who was in charge of the shelter of around 25 people. We decided to have a hot food service on the following Tuesday at 5:30PM. We distributed around 200 cleaning kits, then left around 2:00PM. We left the rest of the cleaning kits at a service center in case more people needed it.

November 20 Hot dinner service and gift card distribution in Atlantic Highlands shelter.

On November 20, volunteers of CHCF (SueSue yang, Wayne Chang, Benjamin Weng, DerChuen weng, Joe Hsia, Jennifer Lin, Ann Wang) provided hot dinner to shelter families in Atlantic Highlands.

On CHCF’s distribution on November 17, volunteers knew that there were around 20 families in the shelter because their homes got damaged by Hurricane Sandy and they had no place to stay but the shelter.

They went to the shelter which was supervised by Red cross manager Marsha. CHCF requested the permission of Marsha to have a hot dinner service on Monday night at 6:30PM. After Marsha’s permission, CHCF contacted with John who own a Thai restaurant in Hoboken. CHCF ordered 50 dinner from John and John promised to prepared 50 dinner on 11/22 at the shelter.

On 11/20 around 5:30PM, volunteers of CHCF and John and his 2 helpers arrived to the shelter, start to prepare food for families in the shelter. The dishes include chicken, pork, Thai noddles, fried rice, eggroll, egg vegetable soup. At 6:30PM CHCF volunteers start to arrange dinner to families in the shelter. Administer Tim Hill also came to have dinner with everybody. All families in the shelter enjoyed the food very much.

After dinner, president SueSueYang gave to each family a Walmart gift card, in the amount of $200.00, hoping that family members, while they were sheltered, could buy something they needed before the day of Thanksgiving. All sheltered families showed their appreciation for CHCF volunteers.