Skip to content

Sudburians driving initiative seeking RVs to house health-care workers

Group aims to protect families especially susceptible to COVID-19, said Kim Brouzes
090420_Kim_Brouzes
Kim Brouzes, owner of Active Therapy Plus in Greater Sudbury, was featured in Sudbury.com's Morning Mugshot in January (she's pictured on the right). Brouzes gathered a team of people to spearhead an initiative seeking recreational vehicles as temporary lodgings for front line health-care workers who have susceptible family members at home. (File)

Three health-care workers at Health Sciences North will have temporary lodgings in an effort to keep their vulnerable family members safe from COVID-19, thanks to the efforts of the organizers of the Facebook group called RV's for Health care workers.

Kim Brouzes, owner and operator of Active Therapy Plus, said she and her partners have secured three recreational vehicles that these health-care workers can take home and park in their driveways. They will be used as temporary homes for those workers, who have family members who are especially susceptible to the virus.
https://www.sudbury.com/morning-mugshot/morning-mugshot-injured-healing-begins-at-active-therapy-plus-2041638

Brouzes is one of the thousands of people in Greater Sudbury who has found herself with time on her hands after businesses were deemed non-essential. She has a lot of friends who are nurses and doctors and wanted to be able to help them in this time of need.

"I couldn't donate thousands of dollars like a lot of the big companies, and I can't sew, so I can't make masks," she said. "But I do have other skills I could put to good use."

Brouzes said she has a great deal of contacts in the community and was able to take advantage of her networking skills. She said she started following what people were chatting about on social media to figure out what direction she could take.

"There seemed to be a lot of fear, not necessarily here in Greater Sudbury, but in places like Montreal, among health-care workers who were concerned about going home after their shift and potentially bringing the virus home with them," she said. "I started to think there must be many spouses of health-care workers here in Sudbury wondering how they would protect their family members."

At the same time, her friend, Chris Whitehead, had responded to a Facebook post from someone looking for a recreational vehicle to be used in a similar fashion. The person lived outside of Greater Sudbury, though, but he still offered up his RV.

"A friend of his daughter is a front line health-care worker, and was looking for an RV because her spouse was immuno-compromised," Brouzes said.

So she contacted Whitehead and enlisted his help.

"I said, why don't we do this," she said. "I'm not overly good with computers, but I'm really good with people and I know a lot of people, so why don't we see if we can get a few more companies together to partner up."

It didn't take long to get the ball rolling from there.

Brouzes said she contacted Dr. Clean, and they offered up their services to disinfect any recreational vehicles pre- and post-delivery to health-care workers.

"They absolutely jumped on board," she said. "This way, people donating their RVs will know it will be disinfected before they get it back."

She also reached out to Gerry Lougheed Jr. on another matter, and that conversation led to him offering up his parking lot on Regent Street to house the RVs if it got to the point where health-care workers couldn't bring them home and park them in their driveways.

On April 6, Brouzes took to Facebook, asking for people to lend their RVs to the cause. In 48 hours, her post had been shared 500 times.

"I now have three RVs that are being cleaned and will be given to three health-care workers, between Friday and Monday," Brouzes said. "It's a really good story. Cleaning and disinfecting the RVs is a big job, so we really only want a few at a time for Dr. Clean to tackle."

They are focusing on health-care workers with family members who are immuno-compromised, or with children with asthma, where the fear isn't just the spouse getting it, but someone in the household who could die from it if they got it, she said.

More RVs will be accepted, just in case the situation gets worse, she said.

"It all depends on how it goes," she said. "If things continue the way they are right now, we may not even need more than seven or so, but if there is some sort of community outbreak that happens, then we're going to need more RVs. We don't know yet, but we just wanted to make sure that if we started this, we can handle the load."

She said she believes everything is in order, as best it could be in the few days since she posted her idea on Facebook.

"I think we've thought of everything and covered the bases," she said. "I know this is an amazing community. I've been blown away by the unity of Sudburians, and we've been getting amazing feedback, some people even offering fifth wheels for our efforts."

Find more information on their Facebook page, RV's for Health care workers.


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.




Arron Pickard

About the Author: Arron Pickard

Read more