As part of our ongoing commitment to New York City and to support the City during its battle with COVID-19, AT&T donated $250,000 to five New York City non-profits to help with emergency relief efforts at the outset of the pandemic. Contributions were provided to the Mayor’s Fund for New York City, the New York Police Foundation, Women in Need, New York Cares, and the City University of New York Emergency Relief Fund.
- $100,000 to the Mayor’s Fund for New York City to provide meals and personal protective equipment for Health + Hospitals (NYC H+H) staff. The frontline staff at the 11 hospitals and other facilities in the NYC H+H system worked around the clock during the first several months of the crisis, and in many cases were unable to return home to their families or take the time to eat a hot meal. NYC H+H facilities like Elmhurst Hospital in Queens and Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan worked tirelessly to treat thousands of individuals suffering from COVID-19 each day. The Mayor’s Fund was instrumental in providing these workers with critical pre-packaged meals and other emergency relief measures throughout the crisis.
- $50,000 to the New York City Police Foundation to provide support for critical emergency supplies for New York City police officers. The Foundation, a prominent New York City institution, supports programs and materials for the NYPD that cannot be accommodated by the City’s budget. Given the fast-moving timeline of the COVID-19 crisis, the Foundation immediately launched a campaign to raise funds for emergency supplies for the NYPD. AT&T’s support provided officers on the frontline with lifesaving personal protective equipment as they continued to keep the City safe.
- $50,000 to Women in Need (Win) to help meet the urgent needs of its staff and families in need during the first several weeks of the crisis. As the largest provider of homeless shelters to New York City families, the staff operated as first responders and helped the City’s most vulnerable families deal with the impacts of coronavirus. Win moved quickly to isolate families who had been exposed to the virus, providing them with all meals, mental health services and education activities for young children. Win also kept its shelter food pantries fully stocked around the clock, since all families were homebound. In addition to ensuring food security, Win quickly implemented an enhanced cleaning protocol to minimize the potential for contamination and spread of COVID-19 across its 14 sites (10 family shelters, one single women’s shelter, and three supportive housing sites). Funding from AT&T helped Win meet these significant emergency needs during the crisis.
- $50,000 to New York Cares, the City’s largest volunteer organization. At the start of the COVID-19 crisis, New York City officially activated New York Cares. The organization provided critical relief programming to New Yorkers suffering the immediate effects of the pandemic, including food insecurity, deteriorating mental health, and loss of schooling. Relief was provided to New Yorkers experiencing food insecurity including:
- 250,000 students who relied on the NYC Department of Education’s Free Lunch program
- 1.8 million New Yorkers receiving SNAP and TANF;
- Vulnerable individuals, including seniors and those with disabilities, who struggled to access affordable food in NYC.
- Funding from AT&T also helped New York Cares rapidly expand hunger relief activities. During the very first weeks of the crisis, New York Cares organized 15 new, ongoing pop-up food distribution sites per day to serve public housing residents. Sixteen new meal packing and distribution sites were also created to support identified communities in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens.
- $50,000 to the City University of New York (CUNY), the City’s higher education system encompassing 11 colleges, seven community colleges and seven graduate schools throughout the five boroughs. CUNY faced enormous challenges to rapidly move its more than 250,000 students to online learning – its low income and working students rely on campus jobs and resources to feed themselves and their families. To help its students, AT&T contributed to CUNY’s emergency relief fund to help facilitate distance learning activities and to secure cash grants to make up for students’ loss of part-time, low-wage jobs.
