Eric Wang ‘21, looks ahead to the changing needs of the community.
This summer 25 students were accepted in the CSGC grants program. These grants are funded due to the generous support of the Cost, Earle/Mendillo and Workman families, who established endowment funds to support the community and public service endeavors of future generations of Deerfield students. For more information on these grants please visit: https://deerfield.edu/csgc/grants
My favorite part about working on Shielding our Defenders is that our organization constantly evolves to fit new needs. Fortunately, PPE supply in the United States has mostly stabilized and many of the hospitals we have worked with in the past have said they no longer need donations. We recently sent a shipment to Keck Medicine of USC, but we have also been using our ability to procure PPE in other ways.
For most of the summer, we have worked on two main initiatives. First, we will host a free mask handout with Representative Alexndria Ocasio-Cortez. We have been in contact with her campaign team numerous times and now just have to decide on a date. In addition, we sent the National Action Network with 1,500 masks for their “Get Off Our Necks” commitment march which will take place on August 28th, the 57th anniversary of Doctor Martin Luther King’s historic March on Washington. There will also be a “Virtual March” for people that can’t be there in person and I encourage the everyone to attend if they can (https://2020march.com/).
Looking into the school year, we are starting a new initiative to provide inner city schools with reusable cloth masks for free. We are making these masks ourselves. We got fabric by reaching out to a few Instagram fashion accounts, asking if they had scraps they were willing to send us. While we also considered buying new materials with our funds, we decided that turning cloths that are too small to be used for clothes into masks is more resource efficient and allows us to save money for other initiatives. We are still in the process of figuring out the specifics of this project, including which school(s) we will partner with, and will work on it beyond the summer into the fall.
Deerfield and the CSGC have helped Shielding our Defenders so much from the first time Ms. Wachsman met with us on Zoom and gave us advice on starting a fundraiser to this summer grant. Thank you for all your dedication to service and enabling students to discover their impact on the world.
