PPE Donation Drive Laguna

I’m writing this blog post to share with everyone how the PPE Donation Drive for our frontliners in Laguna went. This will cover how I came up with the drive, the donation drive’s timeline, challenges I encountered, basically everything that happened during our one week donation drive.

How It Started

It started when I saw my cousin’s post who is also frontliner in a hospital in Laguna. They are in need of protective suits, so I looked for possible suppliers who can ship to Laguna with no required minimum order. At that time, I was only able to buy 12.

The frontliners who received the suits were very much thankful, the quality passed their standards as well and I had a very smooth transaction with the supplier from procurement to delivery.

I was planning on making another donation on the next salary cut-off but the number of cases are starting to rise and our frontliners will need PPEs as soon as possible – there’s no time to wait. That’s when I thought of doing a donation drive.

Timeline

April 5

One-Day Planning: listed which hospitals to donate to, looked for other available suppliers for price comparison, set the target of at least 12 PPEs per hospital
Let my friends know I’m starting a donation drive and asked for their support by sharing my future posts regarding the donation drive
Started making pubmats for solicitation and templates for future updates

April 6

Officially started the donation drive
Posted pubmats on all social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
As of 6pm of the first day, total donations amounted to: 10,721.44 which is equivalent to 13 PPEs

April 7:

On the second day, I tried to be a little aggressive on the solicitation. I wanted to reach the target ASAP since we are fighting against time and April 9 and 10 are holidays.
Given the situation, I posted the “Help Us Reach Our Target” poster.
I also tagged celebrities on Twitter to help us widen our reach. One celeb retweeted it which resulted to numerous likes and retweets as well as donations from strangers. Thank you, Gabbi Garcia!
I also sent messages to celebs on Instagram (politely, of course). Thankfully, one artist replied and donated 10,000 Php but wishes to stay anonymous. Thank you po!
By the end of Day 2, we have reached and even exceeded our target!

April 8:

I decided that since we have already exceeded our target, the third day would be the last day of accepting donations.
And since we have exceeded the target, we accommodated adding additional beneficiary hospital: Lumban Rural Health Unit
Placed orders for Batch 1 (85 PPEs)
By the end of Day 3, we were able to gather a total of: 102,139.21!

April 9:

Placed orders for Batch 2 (42 PPEs)
Batch 1 already arrived at LBC Sta. Cruz Warehouse
Change of allocation to beneficiary hospitals were done to make distribution easier

April 10:

Batch 2 (42 PPEs) was already delivered to Laguna Doctors Hospital and New Sinai MDI Hospital
Batch 1 (85 PPEs) was still in LBC Warehouse due to the holidays

April 11-12:

Batch 1 (85 PPEs) was still in LBC Warehouse due to the holidays

April 13:

We were able to pick-up the shipment from LBC
Batch 1 (85 PPEs) was delivered to the following hospitals: Laguna Provincial Hospital, Laguna Holy Family Hospital, and Pagsanjan Medical Center
10 PPEs for Lumban Rural Health Unit were delivered to Lumban from Pagsanjan

April 14:

10 PPEs were delivered to Lumban Rural Health Unit
We finally concluded the donation drive after delivering all 127 PPEs

Challenges Encountered

Looking for a Supplier

We already have an initial supplier but I kept looking for others basically for price comparison. These are some of the factors we considered when looking for a supplier:

Uses Taffeta with Silver Back Lining for their reusable protective suits
No minimum number of order required (most suppliers I found require at least 100)
Readily available, not preorder, since we want to deliver the PPEs as soon as possible
Ships to Laguna
Price and inclusions

Luckily, we found another supplier offering the same price but with more inclusions: mask, gloves, and shoe covers (depending on availability). They require a minimum order of 25 sets, which is good enough since we’re initially planning to buy 60.

Shipping via LBC

Since most LBC outlets are closed during the quarantine, we coordinated with their customer support representatives on how we can get the shipment. Initially, they told us that we can claim the shipment from their warehouse since the Sta. Cruz branch is closed. They also told us that the warehouse will be open on April 9 despite the holiday.

Come April 9, I verified again with LBC’s via Twitter direct message that we can pick-up the shipment from the warehouse that day, once I got a go signal, I instructed our local distribution team to go to the warehouse. Unfortunately, the warehouse was locked.

I called LBC’s hotline to check and verify but according to another representative, warehouses are closed for pick-ups until Sunday (April 12). Therefore, decided to postpone the distribution to Monday (April 13). This is also the reason why Batch 2 was delivered earlier. Our supplier cannot ship Batch 2 via LBC because of the holidays and opted to ship with their private courier.

Despite the miscommunication with LBC, I still would like to thank their representatives for doing everything they can to help us with claiming the shipment.

DSWD Public Solicitation Permit

A day after formally concluding our donation drive, I came across this statement from DSWD regarding a public solicitation permit. I sent them an email immediately and stated that we conducted a donation drive for frontliners of Laguna hospitals however, I haven’t received a reply from them yet.

Donation Drive Conclusion

All in all, our total donations amounted to 102,139.21 Php which is equivalent to 127 PPE sets and were distributed to 6 hospitals in Laguna.