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Hearts Bigger Than the Storms

In a nondescript industrial park, baking in the mid-day Houston heat, Peter and Paul Hirsch were spearheading a miracle.

>>Don't miss: To Hurricane Hell & Back

The proprietors of Houston-based supplier Hirsch Gift (asi/61005) had secured a small warehouse space where they could collect supplies for Harvey flood victims. Answering an appeal from Hirsch Gift, a call facilitated by social media and industry outlets, promotional product companies from around the nation were sending much-needed goods.

>>Watch a video interview with Hirsch Gift about relief efforts

The Hirsch executives and their team of volunteers, including company employees and promo professionals from other industry firms like Starline (asi/89320), were organizing and transporting the necessities to community distribution points such as schools and churches, driving the items out through nearby residential areas like Meyerland and Bellaire where the water-destroyed interiors of people’s homes still lined the sidewalks as piles of debris. “We’re Houstonians,” says Peter Hirsch, a South African native who has fallen in love with the city he has called home for 20 years, as he wiped sweat from his brow inside the sweltering storage space that teemed with boxes of supplies. Nearby was a stack of diapers for families in need. “It never occurred to us not to help.”

Hearts Bigger Than the StormsPeter Hirsch (left), Paul Hirsch (next from left) and dedicated volunteers like these spearheaded Hirsch Gift’s Harvey relief efforts.

Hirsch Gift’s outreach was a heartening example of the relief efforts promotional product companies throughout the nation engaged in following Harvey and Irma.

Other initiatives included a campaign led by Jason Lucash. The CEO/co-founder of CA-based Origaudio (asi/75254) headed up an effort by industry suppliers to send power banks to storm-ravaged areas so phones could be charged amid power outages. Meanwhile, MA-headquartered Charles River Apparel (asi/44620), a Top 40 supplier, mobilized team members from New England to Atlanta to drive a van packed with donated supplies – raincoats, polos, doggie raincoats and even Walmart gift cards – to Houston as part of a campaign called “Relay to Relief.” Charles River also donated $10,000 to the Houston Food Bank.

Elsewhere, Jeanna Abercrombie of TX-based Pepco Poms (asi/77280) collected school supplies and children’s clothing to help families and employees in two Lone Star State towns badly impacted by flooding. Top 40 distributor HALO Branded Solutions (asi/356000) donated $62,620 to help flood victims, while ASI led an industry-wide matching fund drive that generated at least $93,150 for disaster relief. Additionally, ASI pledged $10,000 in matching fund relief for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands following Hurricane Maria.

In Florida, Jacksonville-based Wicked Branding & Graphix (asi/359902) partnered with Altierus Career College to orchestrate a food and item drive. Members of the Wicked Branding team were also among the many Floridian promo pros who set business aside and ventured into their communities as hands-on volunteers. Phil Fry of Carpe Diem Sales & Marketing (asi/158580) got in on the effort, too. When the winds finished blowing through, streets and properties in Fry’s suburban Orlando neighborhood were thick with downed trees.

“You couldn’t get out of my neighborhood for all the mature oaks that came down,” says Fry. “Rather than wait for city services, some friends and I rolled out with my 1967 Unimog and chainsaws and cleared the road in three hours. That left the fire department free to tend to people, not trees. Like Houston, we don’t wait. We just get after it.”

Hearts Bigger Than the Storms
Paul Hirsch of Hirsch Gift hard at work organizing supplies for Harvey victims.