An East Bay man is leading an effort to get more personal protective equipment into the hands of hospital employees and other frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
"There’s no time to sit on the sidelines," Danny Beesley said. "We need to get active."
Local designers have donated close to 10,000 yards of fabric for them to create cloth masks and isolation gowns. Coca-Cola also sent the group bulk plastic that they’ve been able to convert into more than 100,000 face shields for frontline workers.
Free mask making kits are also being shipped out daily.
"People at home with sewing machines are sewing up the masks and then we’re recollecting them and bringing them back for quality control, sanitizing and packing them out," Beesley said.
With all the donations, Beesley has been able to create a few jobs for otherwise furloughed workers.
"We’ve got about 10 people that we’re paying this week," Beesley said. "This is kind of an extension of my daily work - helping to put people to work to apply skills that they’re learning on the fly."
In addition to giving people a second chance, he’s also helping people around the world, receiving requests for face masks as far as India and China.