St. Louis HELP Volunteers Collect 14 Truckloads of Home Health Equipment at Donation Drive

Volunteers from the St. Louis Health Equipment Lending Program (St. Louis HELP) collected 14 panel truck loads of donated used home health medical equipment during its community-wide equipment donation drive on Saturday October 10.

”We are so grateful for all the donors and we extend our deep thanks to each one,” said Laura Cannon-Singer, executive director of the 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization. (Website: http://stlhelp.org/).

“St. Louis HELP will clean and recondition all of the donated home health equipment and loan it for free to anyone who needs it for as long as they need it,” she said

Donors dropped off hundreds of home health items at 14 Walgreen’s parking lots in metro St. Louis where St. Louis HELP volunteers loaded the equipment onto trucks, including 13 rentals, and transported the equipment to St. Louis HELP’s warehouse in Olivette. Equipment donors got a receipt for tax deduction purposes.

“People in four different counties in St. Louis and Illinois donated used wheelchairs, scooters, walkers, crutches, canes, shower chairs and shower stools among hundreds of items that we will recondition and loan for free,” Cannon-Singer said.

“There is a huge need in the community for the home medical equipment that we provide and we are always working to restock our inventory of donated items,” she said, adding, “Nothing goes to waste. We divert about 140 tons of used medical equipment from going into landfills every year. Good parts of broken equipment are used to repair other equipment. Broken wooden crutches are recycled via a tree chipping company.”

In 2014, St. Louis HELP received a prestigious “Point of Light Award” from Points of Light, the volunteer management organization founded in 1990 in response to President George Bush’s call for volunteer community service.

For more information, call (314) 567-4700 or see the website http://stlhelp.org/.

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