Twenty BD employees from our Humacao site in Puerto Rico recently took part in a two-day service project to support the transformation of a local school – one of dozens on the island that have been closed since Hurricane Maria – into a thriving community center.

This impactful volunteer project is part of a broader, cross-sector collaboration between BD, Heart to Heart International and Trinity Life Center (TLC) – a community health clinic that serves the community of Yabucoa, one of the municipalities that was most severely impacted by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Heart to Heart International and TLC have been working to repurpose the school to serve as a community center for local residents. When complete, the center will house a health clinic, a commercial and a residential laundry. It will also host youth camps and health fairs, and will serve as a hurricane shelter, which will house pre-positioned disaster relief supplies. BD donated $125,000 to Heart to Heart International to support this project, and to bolster other relief projects on the island.

The cross-sector partnership between our three organizations has been recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Action Network on Post-Disaster Recovery as a Commitment to Action. This distinction seeks to highlight collaborative efforts that develop specific, measurable programs that advance recovery and promote long-term resiliency across the Caribbean region, following Hurricane Maria.

More than 1,000 BD employees call Puerto Rico home, and the majority were directly impacted by Hurricane Maria. They are committed to playing an active role in the island’s recovery.

The BD volunteers who participated in this particular service project helped beautify the community center campus by painting a number of buildings in the complex, and by installing new washing machines. The laundry area will serve area residents who still do not have access to clean water and are washing clothes in streams and lakes that often contain bacteria and other harmful contaminants.

This service project, coupled with BD’s ongoing investments and product donations to the region, provide our employees in Puerto Rico with a powerful opportunity to experience first-hand our company’s mission of expanding healthcare access to communities that need it most.