Austin, Texas, May 12, 2020 – Builders Care Austin Delivers 5,000 Facial Masks to AISD Food-Service Workers
Responding to an immediate need of the Austin Independent School District, Builders Care Austin (BCA), successfully delivered 5,000 facial masks, to be used by food workers in the daily distribution of free meals for at-risk and low-income students.
Once BCA learned of this situation, it was able to team with the Austin Infill Coalition (AIC) to source, fund, and deliver the much-needed masks in ten days. Previously, the AISD workers had been using improvised personal-protection equipment, including bandanas, to protect both themselves and those picking up meals, from the Covid-19 virus.
Currently, AISD provides two meals per day for students at over 70 sites across Austin. AISD is currently serving an average of 14,000 student meals per day.
Builders Care Austin is the philanthropic arm of the AIC. Funds for this donation came directly from the AIC, with additional matching donations from other BCA members. This is BCA’s forth large-impact donation to the AISD: it previously paid off all student lunch debt for the entire district across all grades, it donated $10,000 to Blackshear Elementary School’s, to pay for an entire year of after-school tutoring, and helped fund a Thanksgiving meal for 100 families, also at Blackshear. BCA is grateful they could provide these much-needed PPE supplies, thus helping keep AISD food-service workers safe, while these workers help feed our AISD students. BCA also looks forward to recognizing and addressing future needs in the community.
Ed Ishmael, BCA’s founder and President, says, ‘We are grateful to our donors for making this donation to AISD possible, but we are even more grateful to the AISD Food Service workers who show up every day, in spite of this pandemic, to help feed Austin’s school kids.’ Additional information about this donation can be obtained through Ed Ishmael by emailing him at ed.ishmael@ilawpc.com or by calling him at (214) 6743322.
Infill builders deliver housing inside the city in existing neighborhoods near job centers, which is easier on the environment than suburban building and less of a strain on the municipal budget, since infill building optimizes existing infrastructure and city service areas.