By Chris Bryant
Florida A&M University Engineering Living-Learning Community (LLC) students teamed up to help feed New York City health care workers on the front line of battling COVID-19.
Destini Jones, a sophomore, served as a co-project manager for the LLC’s initiative to feed health care workers at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, in May.
“We just kind of wanted to create some kind of breather for these people,” said Jones. “They are in fact putting themselves at risk and their family.”
New York City has had one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in the country with more than 200,000 confirmed cases.
Their adviser, Charmane Caldwell, Ph.D., encourages her students to do a community service project every year.
“They wanted to see what ways they could make an impact on essential workers for COVID,” said Caldwell, director of Student Access at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.
They identified the issue when one of the students mentioned their aunt is a nurse and that the nurses get so busy, they cannot stop to eat.
Toni Hayes, the administrative supervisor at Montefiore Wakefield Medical Center, said, “It was a huge success!”
Montefiore is one of the leading hospitals in New York’s fight against COVID-19. Workers here have been reaching for all avenues to help the public against COVID-19 with a COVID hotline, and an online COVID assessment.
“There were so many things going on as far as short supplies and not being able to have regular lunch breaks,” said Jones.
Zaire Shaw, the co-project manager, put together petitions for better masks, defenses against COVID-19, and other provisions for the healthcare workers. The group said the petitions would serve as a more wide-reaching initiative to accompany their smaller service project.
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