Over the holiday break, St. Thomas High School partnered with Houston Furniture Bank, Spanish nonprofit Ayuda en Accion and DOLE to help families affected by hurricanes Eta and Iota in Honduras. Having already filled one 40 ft container with non-perishable food and clothes collected right here in Houston, the group arrived at Houston Furniture Bank on Saturday, December 19th to fill a second container. 20 students, parents, and teachers from St. Thomas Highschool loaded 75 bundles of donated items, 50 donated filters, and plastic buckets for water purification at shelters, along with items donated by Houston Furniture Bank for the relief effort. The container was shipped out with 5,300 pounds of total donations, including 64 cot mattresses and over 100 foam pieces which will be made into much-needed mattresses. DOLE is providing transportation by ship. Once in Honduras, Ayuda en Accion has partnered with a co-op of Honduran sewists to turn the donated foam into mattresses for the relief effort. Houston Furniture Bank provided furniture assistance to over 3,500 families affected by Hurricane Harvey and is proud to be able to help its neighbors to the south while continuing to provide furniture assistance to Houston-area families. The foam that is being donated is the product of Houston Furniture Bank’s mattress recycling program, which recycles over 100 mattresses every day. Each recycled mattress represents 23 cubic feet of recovered landfill space.
The group of volunteers not only loaded the container with the donations they collected, they also helped Houston Furniture Bank further their mission of Making Empty Houses Homes by recycling mattresses, assembling furniture, and unloading furniture donations from generous Houstonians. It was an absolute pleasure to have such a hardworking and service-minded group of students at Houston Furniture Bank.
Special thanks to Rafael Garcia Board of Directors, Magnificat House, Andrew Quittenton, Director of Campus Ministry at Saint Thomas High School, and Parker St. Raymond, Junior at St. Thomas High School, who appear in the above video.