Masks for Scotland is a crowdfunding site set up mid-March to address the PPE shortages in the Scottish Community health care system. It is a family affair, a Mum and three daughters, but with huge support from the community of Scotland. During the course of the fund raiser about 4000 people contributed funds, with others contributing in kind.
Thanks to people’s generosity we raised £255,127 to buy PPE. Donations of PPE received ‘in kind’ were worth another £159,360 giving a total of £414,487. Fundraising has now stopped with this huge donated amount buying a very large quantity of PPE.
So many people helped, the local community in Scone acted as quality control, hand checking 3500 isolation gowns, 52 drivers from all over Perthshire volunteered to deliver, as did many from further afield such as ‘Polar Bear’ a trucker passing through Perth who took PPE to the Isle of Lewis. One driver has delivered to 41 places!
Edith Bowman hosted ‘For the Love of Scotland’, a livestream which doubled our funds and allowed us to hit target, she and her guests were marvellous. Celebrities gave both funds and time, many making videos to support our appeal. A real bonus was the number of people raising funds by competition, sponsored videos, T shirts, musical evenings, and quiz nights. Rotary clubs and snooker clubs donated too. Lyon & Turnbull raised £24k in an auction of beautiful items and fantastic days/evenings out kindly donated by the Scottish Community. Advice, funds and major help came from the Gloag Foundation and Angela Higgins, Glasgow. Perth airport stored the PPE and DHL delivered the overseas orders, both free of charge. The Scottish Government did all the logistics of bringing 20,000 isolation gowns to Scotland from China.
So far over 350 deliveries have been made to Care Homes and GP practices, making the staff, and those they care for much safer. And more is going out each day.
This has been a humbling experience for the Masks team, to see how welcome the deliveries of kit are, and to see how Scotland rallied round to help in a time of crisis. This family of 4 could have done nothing without the wonderful Scottish people. Big thanks!
(Update provided by Masks for Scotland)
