Retailer donates PPE to Fall River Police and other locations across RI, MA

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ocean State Job Lot Charitable Foundation has leveraged its supply chain to provide hundreds of thousands of pieces of personal protective equipment to healthcare organizations and municipalities, more than one million pounds of food to vulnerable populations, as well as thousands of cooked meals to frontline workers. Now, the Foundation is in the process of distributing more than $1.5 million worth of PPE to police and fire departments in the 142 communities where Ocean State Job Lot stores are currently, or soon-to-be, located across the Northeast. The donations include 6,000 surgical masks, 3,200 KN95 masks, 40 gallons of hand sanitizer, 20 face shields and 30 infrared non-contact thermometers, a total retail value of over $11,000, to each community.

Today, the Fall River Police Department announced that Chief Jeff Cardoza and Sergeant J.T. Hoar picked up a donation of KN95 Masks, Antibacterial Solution and other PPE items for the department.

“With our unique buying power and access to countless vendors, we’ve put an enormous amount of effort into securing large quantities of personal protective equipment throughout the pandemic,” said David Sarlitto, Executive Director of the Ocean State Job Lot Charitable Foundation. “We hope these donations to the men and women working around the clock to keep us safe and healthy, will help keep them safe and healthy.”

According to the company, in late March, OSJL contributed $250,000 to a fund dedicated to acquiring critical supplies needed in the fight against COVID-19 by leveraging its buying power to source items such as gloves, masks, disinfectants, sanitizers, eye protection, and more from its vendors. The Foundation distributed more than 1.2 million surgical masks to those on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19, including 4,800 to each police and fire department in the communities in which its stores are located (including those donated as part of this initiative). In April, OSJL launched the ‘Mask Fabric For Free’ campaign, which upon completion supplied customers with the fabric necessary to create an estimated 1.8 million homemade cloth face masks.