27K Masks Handed Out In The Hill

The following write-up was submitted by Hill North Community Management Team member Leslie Radcliffe.

In under four hours on Saturday, the Hill North Community Management Team and 120 volunteers hand delivered over 27,000 surgical masks to over 4,000 residential units in the Hill community!

The management team and the volunteers also handed out information about Covid-19 and about testing sites during the door-to-door distribution. The Hill and Fair Haven neighborhoods are the ​‘hot spots’ of Covid-19 infection in New Haven.

A few months ago, the Hill North Management Team discussed using some of its Neighborhood Public Improvement Program funds to provide personal protective equipment to its residents.

Hill resident Leslie Radcliffe took up the challenge to get the necessary masks and come up with a plan to get them to as many residents as possible.

Taking cues from the Newhallville mask drive-thru distribution, she made contact with the sponsor. After several conversations with Amy Stefanowski and Mark Shiffrin of Masks for CT and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, $7,000.00 of funding was secured from the Yale Office of New Haven Affairs and $3,000.00 from the Hill North CMT. That money was used to purchase 21,000 surgical masks.

Distribution throughout the entire Hill community was made possible with additional support, contributions and volunteer assistance provided by the Yale Smilow Cancer Center, Yale School of Public Health, City of New Haven Dept of Public Health, the Medical Reserve Corps, Yale Hospital Residents, CPEN, Timothy Dwight Hall, Hill North residents, Hill South Community Management Team Community and individual volunteers from greater New Haven, Hamden, North Haven, Derby and Madison.

While packing up at the end of the event, Hill North CMT chair Howard Boyd, along with Jose DeJesus, Maxine Harris, Ms Dora Brown and Ann Boyd were already talking about plans for the next focused neighborhood COVID prevention activity!

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that 21,000 masks were distributed in the Hill Saturday. The correct number is 27,000. Radcliffe said that the management team purchased 21,000 from Masks for CT and received another 6,000 masks donated through Masks for CT.