A Success Story of Supply Chain Management-Article by Archana Shah

Article by Archana Shah: It takes a village to work on any project.  A small idea to help those in need started on April 1st 2020 with an emotional drive from Dr Lopamudra Das Roy, Founder of Breast Cancer Hub who thought that masks were the utmost need for the healthcare workers & scaling up the production was an issue. When Dr. Lopa proposed her idea, within a day, many beautiful souls jumped in, also tagging their friends along & THE COVID-19 MASK MAKING TEAM was formed.

We named our project as “TogetherWeR1”.  Dr Das Roy formed a separate WhatsApp group & pulled our team together.  Few volunteers came forward to compile the inventory list.  It helped us tremendously to understand the items in hand, what items needs to be ordered.  We had several other team members running behind the scene like material washing, ironing, cutting, stitching, delivering and dropping the material at the doorsteps of the volunteer who were ready to stitch. We formed North and South teams to reduce the long commute.  We have donated 1545 masks in 38 days, 101 volunteers (including. kids, Youth, Adults, Grandparents).  The Adult & Kids masks were donated to 26 organizations - Healthcare Centers, Underprivileged Sectors (Shelters); High Risk Population & Essential Services in NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA & CHICAGO,IL to Lessen the Spread..

Our team member prepared an inventory list with the name of volunteers from North and South Charlotte.  Our delivery volunteers picked up the material and dropped at the doorsteps of the stitching team. When the masks were stitched and ready to be picked up; our pick up team went and picked up the items.  During all this process, it was made sure that all the materials were new, fabric was 100% cotton -new & unused.  We also purchased elastic.  It was determined that the elastic was too small and may not work for the longer time.  With an expert knowledge the next steps were planned & we decided to go with fabric strips. We had issues with twist ties, and we discussed the pros & cons of using metal nose bridge and decided to skip that part for safety concerns.  At one point, we had more mask cutouts and less strips.  Couple of volunteers stitched the strips for the masks.  Few videos were prepared to showcase the steps to help new members to volunteer to stitch the masks who had no prior experience of making masks. 

During all this process, we had several hiccups and helping hands to give the solution.  All of the ready masks were packed in a Ziploc bags and shipped via FedEx Ground or hand delivered to the target organizations by our designated delivery team.

The quote that “Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.” “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give” describes our group so well. COVID-19 will remain in our hearts for various reasons, from worst to bad to good.  Looking back, our volunteer efforts have indeed changed the thought process for all of us.  Little that we could give we gave, our heart is full of appreciation for Dr. Lopa and BCH efforts to save lives.

It is a bitter sweet moment that our mask making project has come to an end.  TogetherWeR1 team succeeded with all of the help of volunteers, young minds and like-minded people. During this quarantine period, although we all stayed apart, we worked together.  Everything was well planned and executed so well.  A big salute to the entire team TogetherWeR1 who have made history in our volunteer effort.

Although it is a team effort - it was Dr. Lopa’s dedication that contributed to our success.  Thank you Dr. Lopa for inspiring us. Your attention to detail made us all work together. You updated us the daily progress either by calling, texting, messaging, maintaining a database of masks received versus delivered, coordinating with all the team members, posting on public website our team album & our team spirit, taking accountability of each mask to be dispatched to the utmost needed organizations, taking responsibility of the safety of our Mask making team, & not delivering the masks until & unless Breast Cancer Hub waiver signed by the recipient organizations, also making sure that the project is executed with proper guidelines & 100% ethics & integrity.

Our small town in Charlotte and surrounding area became a small factory to sew end to end masks to the front liners.

Please read more about our amazing selfless team members as compiled by Dr Lopa.

https://www.breastcancerhub.org/covid19-projects

https://www.facebook.com/pg/breastcancerhub/photos/?tab=album&album_id=947318572367002