Big Y customers, staff boost Red Cross Haitian relief coffers
Date: 3/26/2010
March 29, 2010By Debbie Gardner
Assistant Managing Editor
SPRINGFIELD -- The generosity of Big Y customers and employees is ready to help the continuing recovery efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
On March 22, Rick Lee, executive director of the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross accepted a check for over $108,000 from Big Y President and COO Charles D'Amour during a brief ceremony in the produce section of the company's Cooley Street World Class Market.
"We're blessed. Our employees and customers are very generous. They support the local food banks, [disasters such as] Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami, and now this earthquake in Haiti," D'Amour told Reminder Publications.
The donation was amassed through a combination of canister collections -- all stores had receptacles conveniently and prominently placed at registers -- individual store fundraisers and a dress-down day at the corporate support center in Springfield that garnered $1,000 for the fund.
"It's one of the things customers ask of us," D'Amour said of Big Y's continuing efforts to act as a leader in disaster aid. "They look at us more as their hometown store. They look to us to pull people together."
Lee expressed gratitude to the D'Amour family and to Big Y customers for their continued generosity in the wake of so many recent disasters.
"They're always there when we need them, and we're grateful," he said of Big Y's leadership in collecting donations.
Lee said for the Haitian people, Big Y's efforts came at a critical time, while the images of suffering and devastation are still fresh in people's minds.
"The money has to be raised up front. Even a staggering disaster like Haiti fades. And we know it will be at least three -- perhaps five -- years that will be spent rebuilding Haiti," he said.
Building upon lessons learned in response to multiple disasters in the past decade in particular, the response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans Lee said the Red Cross will, for the first time in its history, be sharing its donations with other reputable relief agencies to speed the recovery in this poorest of Caribbean countries.
"In the case of Haiti, a lot of Red Cross money is being committed to other credible organizations already on the ground," he said. Among those agencies benefitting from the Red Cross' Haitian relief funds are Habitat for Humanity and the U.N. World Food Organization.
"It makes the money go further and the recovery go quicker when you collaborate with other agencies that have specialties, " Lee said in explanation for this new approach to disaster relief. "No one is better at building houses than Habitat for Humanity. No one can feed people more efficiently than the World Food Organization."
