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College students help supply essential workers with key household items

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As the coronavirus pandemic continues, a group of college students have come to the aid of essential workers in need of household supplies through their own initiative: Give Essential.

Give Essential members are supplying personal hygiene products, feminine hygiene products, cleaning supplies, children’s activities and toys, and gift cards to essential workers across the country. The initiative lists deliver drivers, postal workers, grocery personnel, retail personnel and bank tellers as examples of essential workers.

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“We have been able to reach 2,100 essential workers through Give Essential. We have gotten a great response from both our donors, who have been incredible and volunteers,” said Amy Guan, a Dartmouth College senior and executive director of Give Essential.

Give Essential is a website that has both essential workers and donors fill out forms for what items an essential worker needs and what a donor can provide.

Essential workers fill out the online form which includes proof of employment and list requested resources in the scope of the five categories.

“On our form we ask for proof such as pay stubs or also accept for delivery drivers a screenshot of their working app,” Guan said.

A donor who can supply the requested resource is connected to the essential worker.

Give Essential will then email the donor the match and the donor can send the supply directly to the essential worker they are matched with.

“We are really trying to capitalize on the fact that people have these extra household items lying around collecting dust. To be able to connect them with an essential worker that could use those items is great use of those resources,” said Crystal An, executive director of Give Essential.

Amy Guan, Rine Uhm and Crystal An are the executive directors of Give Essential.

The initiative was co-founded by Amy Guan and Rine Uhm, who are college students and roommates at Dartmouth College.

“When I came home for spring break the virus started really ramping up. I felt a little helpless sitting at home and reading the news,” Guan said. “The more I read about essential workers many of the problems they faced were because of resource mismatches. My college roommate (Rine) and I came up with idea of Give Essential to bridge that gap and connect them with crucial necessities.”

Crystal An partnered with Guan and Uhm to launch Give Essential.

“I contacted Amy a couple days after the conception of Give Essential, basically looking to help out in any way that I could. I was in the situation where I had recently come back from Asia on a gap year. I observed over there the escalation of some of the COVID-19 cases,” An said. “When I came back home I had a desire to do something to help.”

An, a recent graduate of Case Western Reserve University, will be heading to medical school in fall.

Both Guan and An are from Princeton.

“There are a lot people out there that really want to help others, but do not know how they can. That is the beauty of Give Essential, which gives community individuals a chance to have a direct impact on the essential workers during this time,” An said.

Guan explained a recent story of an essential worker requesting help through Give Essential.

“A father who is a grocery store clerk has a son who is seven months old and has had three open heart surgeries. Everything has to be clean and all the cleaning supplies he needs are sold out in stores. It is hard for him to stretch the cleaning supplies he already has,” Guan said. “To get him cleaning supplies such as soap, detergent, a dusting wipe are small things that can have a big impact on someone’s life.”

For more information about Give Essential or to donate, visit www.giveessential.org.

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