Henrico County needs more volunteers for Friday’s PPE distribution event

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Henrico County volunteers began day one of their two-day PPE distribution event on Thursday — passing out PPE kits and valuable information to neighborhood doorsteps in the East End.

But they still need more volunteers to hit their goal.

Partnering with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, and under the Governor’s Health Equity Pilot Program, the county has created 20,000 PPE care kits to personally deliver to Henrico’s residences.

The kits are made up of three reusable cloth face coverings, a bottle of hand sanitizer, information on COVID-19, and voter registration pamphlets.

Their goal is to hit all five county magisterial districts — and they had identified various neighborhoods throughout Henrico County by using their GIS data mapping.

Monica Smith-Callahan, the Deputy County Manager of Community Affairs and organizer of the event, says it is very important that PPE is given to vulnerable communities.

“We need this PPE, as you all know COVID is still with us,” Smith-Callahan said. “We don’t know when and if this disease will go away. We know that the fall is coming. We have cold and flu season coming out. Masks and face coverings are going to be worn all throughout the rest of this year, we could say. Maybe even into next year.”

And they still stress the importance of having more people sign up to volunteer for tomorrow’s event in the West End.

“The more volunteers we have, the more time and landmass we will cover in each of these magisterial districts,” she said. “If you are available tomorrow and able to join us, please come out.”

Registration begins at Quioccasin Middle School at 7:30 a.m. — then they load buses and head out at 8 a.m. The distribution should be done around noon.

If you decide that you want to help out last minute, they are taking walk-up signups.

If you would like to sign up, you can find the information on the HandsOn Greater Richmond website.

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