By Julie D’Aloiso
Sean Whittaker (Nordonia class of 2011) and Bobby Wolf (Nordonia class of 2012)
are letting everyone know about Caregiver Shelter Fund. Sean lives in Stow and is a Partner Sales Executive for Airriva and Bobby is the City Manager. Bobby also lives in Stow and is a fireman in Garfield Heights.
Airriva has been in business for around 1.5 years. They are an Ohio based company providing tech lodging to doctors, nurses and corporations. They serve three major cities: Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus. They have 150 units in total, with about 50 in each city.
Their usual occupancy rate was 96% before the COVID-19 crisis hit. As many of the events cancelled they received a lot of cancellations for their units as well.
Bobby said, “We wanted to make sure our employees stayed working and continued to get paid and for me it really touches home a little more since I can related to the people that do not want to go home to their loved ones. We wanted to give back to the people that were helping us most.”
They decided to make a change to help keep paying their employees, and give back to the caregivers that are keeping us safe. This is how the Caregiver Shelter Fund started. Once they decided to do it – it only took 3 days to set it up. Sean explained: “We have a culture of people that are quickly looking to adapt.” This all happened on March 26th and since then they have raised $50,000 with a goal of $100,000.
Currently, they are housing 35 medical workers with a waiting list of 50 people.
According to Sean: “It is very important for medical workers to have a safe living environment. These medical workers cannot live at home because they are self-isolating from their loved ones. Two days after we started the funding program, the first care giver reached out to us. Some of these people were living with people with autoimmune deficiencies and some caregivers were living in their cars to prevent bringing the virus home to their loved ones.”
Your donation helps pay for short-term housing for these workers to avoid spread of COVID-19. https://www.caregivershelterfund.org/
On Sunday April 26th, they will be featured on Fox news channel at 12:00 pm.
Sean can be reached at:
sean@airriva.com | phone: 216.469.3536
More info about Airriva here:
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