On behalf of the Board of Directors, Executive Director and Staff of Nueva Esperanza, we would like to thank the entire Western Mass community for your donations, support, volunteer hours and love. Special thank you to Carmen Ocasio, the South Holyoke Neighborhood Association President, and JJ from Revitalize CDC who have been here every day working the logistical aspect of the donation center. Nueva would like to thank Mayor Alex Morse, the City of Holyoke, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, UMass Amherst and all of the five colleges, their students, faculty and staff for volunteer and donating physical items. There are many more individuals, and groups to thank and we want to apologize that we cannot list them all here.
We would like to remind the public that as of yesterday October 1st, 2017. Our donation center for the City of Holyoke has closed. We are no longer accepting physical donation items. We would continue to strongly encourage folks to donate monetary donations through Freedom Credit Union.
We are proud that our site has collected well over 30,000 pieces of relief items (We have already seen close to 20,000 of those pieces be delivered or en route to Puerto Rico). The focus is now preparing to welcome a large migration wave of the diaspora to Puerto Rico, we support the efforts of Enlace de Familias as a family resource center, a one stop shop to welcome families into the City of Holyoke.
Nueva Esperanza has been collecting since September 6th and has been working non stop. Today our office is closed in preparation for construction next door to our building, and to allow our staff a chance to rest/recover.