Helping others — Healdsburg Troop 21 Boy Scout and Eagle Scout hopeful, Ben Stevens, collected and donated over 100 bottles of hand sanitizer to Reach for Home, Catholic Charities and the Redwood Gospel Miss
Healdsburg Troop 21 Boy Scout Ben Stevens recently collected hand sanitizer donations from local distillers and donated between 300 to 400 bottles of hand sanitizer to Reach for Home, Catholic Charities and the Redwood Gospel Mission.
The generous effort was part of Stevens’ Eagle Scout project, a community-based service project that is part of the final step in earning the rank of Eagle Scout.
Stevens said he was inspired to start this particular project after hearing about hand sanitizer shortages in the news.
“I was looking for something for my Eagle Project and just kept hearing in the news that there’s just no hand sanitizer. For my senior service project I worked with the Redwood Gospel Mission and I worked there every Monday helping with food prep and on my last couple of days working there just before the quarantine, they had completely run out of hand sanitizer, so I just thought that it would be a good idea to start collecting hand sanitizer and getting it out to these homeless organizations,” Stevens said.
With some extra help from his teachers at Cardinal Newman High School, Stevens was able to secure hand sanitizer donations from local distilleries and wineries.
“The hand sanitizer was donated from the local distillery, Young & Yonder, and I also got some hand sanitizer through Mr. Munselle and as far as labels and plastic bottles, those were things I got myself,” he said.
Stevens estimates that he was able to provide anywhere between 300 and 400 bottles of hand sanitizer to the aforementioned organizations.
Jaclyn Ramirez, a nurse with Reach for Home’s street medicine program, said little things like hand sanitizer can help people take safety precautions.
“As a nurse I can assure you that simple safety precautions amongst the unsheltered can alleviate many negative health outcomes and the use of hand sanitizer is one of those precautions we are currently using,” Ramirez said.
When asked if the reality of COVID-19 made it difficult to work on the project, Stevens said shortages in things like hand sanitizer bottles made it a bit tricky.
“One of the more difficult parts was getting the small plastic bottles. It was pretty difficult because I think everyone is trying to make their own hand sanitizer and so there were a lot of shortages (of sanitizer bottles) and it took a month or so for these bottles that I bought to ship,” he said.
He added it was also difficult to have more of an interactive and personal connection with the project due to health restrictions and privacy concerns.
“When I went to drop off the hand sanitizers I was hoping to have a more interactive project where I would meet the people I was helping out, but partly because of privacy reasons and also because of COVID-19, I couldn’t do that,” he said.
The next step in his Eagle Scout project includes completing paperwork and meeting with the Eagle Board to discuss his work and rank.
“Now it’s a bunch of paperwork, so I’ve been having my scout master help me out with that and then I send in my application to the Eagle Board and hopefully we’ll have a Zoom meeting and through that they’ll determine whether or not I get the rank of Eagle Scout,” Stevens said.
After that, Stevens is set to attend the University of Denver this fall and plans on majoring in international business.
