In this time of COVID the new normal of doing good is much more digital. As many millennials are showing their support for the country’s health workers by using social media to raise funds for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as face masks, face shields and hazmat suits.
A eureka moment
Last March, five friends in Quezon City got together in a eureka moment to start a PPE fund drive for the country’s frontline healthcare workers. With the help of friends, families and kind strangers, they have raised over P3.2 million as of April 28, 2020.
According to 26-year-old Jonas Tamayo, it was his friend Chabeli Cua who came up with the idea. Cua, along with Choi Co, takes care of sourcing supplies as well as hospital relations. Meanwhile, their friends Frankie Cu and Ysa Syyap handle the finances and logistics while Tamayo is in-charge of communications.
The group’s initial target was to help around 5-10 hospitals. However, the strong response of people who took part in their campaign enabled them to do much more.
The group used three social media main channels as platforms for their campaign – Facebook, Instagram and a live Google Doc that is made available for the public.
Over 60,000 meals for frontliners
CloudEats founders Kimberly Yao and Iacopo Rovere have been helping out frontline workers by providing them with hot meals. To date, CloudEats has raised P3.8 million and has given over 60,000 hot meals through various partner hospitals and local government units (LGUs) in Metro Manila.
CloudEats is the largest cloud kitchen company in the Philippines. A cloud kitchen serves as a restaurant kitchen that accepts incoming orders only through online ordering systems and offers no dine-in facility.
Yao and Rovera have distributed all their donations to partner hospitals and LGUs. These include the Philippine General Hospital, East Avenue Medical Center, the National Kidney Transplant Institute, Cardinal Santos Medical Center and the Philippine Heart Center.
To raise awareness about their campaign, the two have relied on Spotify, Facebook and Instagram. With the help of families and friends, they gathered a lot of donations through Facebook and Instagram tags and shares. The group also constantly posts updates on their feed, stories and newsletters regarding the progress of the food drive.
To utilize social media, the company put up a donation website for the food drive. For those who are interested to take part in this campaign, you may donate and learn more about the fund drive at www.cloudeats.ph.
Tulong Ilocano
24-year-old Kitkat Pajaro, along with her group of friends from Ilocos Sur, started a fundraising campaign called “TULONG ILOCANO”. It is a COVID-19 fund drive for frontliners based in Ilocos Sur. According to Pajaro, the group wanted to create a platform for other Ilocanos like themselves who want to help frontline medical workers in COVID-19 hospitals in Ilocos Sur.
The group’s initial target was P150,000 but they managed to raise P162,158.40 of total donations.
To push their fund drive, Pajaro and her friends used three major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
To know more about the efforts of the PLDT Group in beating the COVID-19 pandemic, please visit https://beta.pldt.com/covid19/
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