In 2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic hit the world and leaves deep scars. Unfortunately, our international development projects and a large part of our national funding projects have also come to a standstill.
The pandemic, as an extreme and challenging situation, gave us cause to think about possible new funding projects and to make our contribution to the fight against Covid-19. The lack of protective equipment for hospitals, social services, nursing homes as well as retirement homes was so omnipresent that we wanted to help quickly and unbureaucratically.
Procuring protective masks and clothing is the task of hospitals and state institutions in normal times. But what is normal in times of Covid-19? - Existing emergency plans were not yet prepared for this and could not be adapted quickly enough. We have used the “stay at home” and became active.
With the help of our family friend, Michael Schwalbach, and his contact to Michael Linker and his company Beauty Service International GmbH in Herdecke, we were able to order certified FFP2/ KN95 face masks in China at particularly reasonable conditions.
EduCare e.V. has donated 20,000 mouth and nose protection masks directly to the mayor’s office of the city of New York via the Covid-19 Task Force of the UNO in New York.
Another 10,000 donated face masks will protect the medical and nursing staff as well as the patients at the SLK Clinic in Heilbronn.
Through an online fundraising campaign, which we launched via GoFundMe, we were also able to procure a further number of 1,340 certified FFP2 protective masks.
400 of these were donated to the Heilbronn Deaconry, which distributed them to the women's shelter and the people cared for by the outpatient nursing service.
A further 400 were delivered to the Caritas association for the archdiocese Hamburg which will use them for the reopening of their dental vehicle and their counceling centres.
Another 400 masks were donated to Caritas Heilbronn Hohenlohe. These are used within the social service. The remaining masks were given to the Malteser Relief service Diocesan and District Office Hamburg, which use them in the school medical service.
At the same time we became aware of a young man named Christian Richter, who, like so many others, had to close his business in times of the pandemic. However, he used the time to produce professional face shields with 3D printers.
With our donation we were able to increase his capacity significantly, and enable him to supply many dental practices and hospitals in the Heilbronn area.
We are pleased that we were able to help quickly and effectively with these actions. At the same time we are now looking forward to the future and hope that our currently dormant projects will soon gain momentum again.