IRVING, Texas — ExxonMobil has donated thousands of meals and protective medical equipment to Houston-area healthcare workers, police officers and firefighters battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The fuel retailer has provided $100,000 for protective equipment, including medical masks, to Texas Medical Center member hospitals, the Houston Police Foundation, the Fire Fighters Foundation of Houston and the Spring Fire Department. ExxonMobil is also working with the Global Center for Medical Innovation to design and support the manufacturing of reusable shields and masks for healthcare workers during the pandemic.
“We want to thank those teams and individuals working around the clock to look after the people of the greater Houston area,” said Linda DuCharme, president of ExxonMobil Upstream Integrated Solutions. “In addition to supporting healthcare workers and first responders, we also want to help out area restaurants and their employees who’ve been hard hit by the pandemic.”
ExxonMobil has also donated $100,000 to the TX Restaurant Relief Fund—a program that provides financial support to Texas’s independent restaurants and its employees—for the preparation and delivery of approximately 6,000 meals for front-line workers. This initiative will allow participating restaurants to rehire up to 50% of their furloughed employees, said Dr. Emily Williams Knight, president and CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association and Education Foundation.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on restaurants, a critical part of Texas’s food supply chain,” she said. “In every crisis, restaurants are often the first to help feed the front line, including hospital staff and first responders. We are incredibly grateful to ExxonMobil for this grant, which both supports Houston restaurants [and] their employees, and enables them to feed front-line responders during this unprecedented time.”
Both moves follow ExxonMobil’s recent $250,000 donation to the Houston Food Bank and the Montgomery County Food Bank to provide roughly 1 million meals to Houston-area residents. ExxonMobil has now provided a total of $450,000 for Houston-area pandemic relief.
“The Texas Medical Center has been overwhelmed with the level of generosity demonstrated by entities and individuals alike during the COVID-19 outbreak,” said William McKeon, president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center. “The entire Texas Medical Center network thanks ExxonMobil for implementing a donation program that will not only benefit the essential healthcare workers and first responders who are saving lives on the front lines during this pandemic, but also supports the local restaurant industry, which has and will continue to be a critical part of what makes Houston such a special place.”
Irving, Texas-based ExxonMobil has approximately 11,500 Exxon- and Mobil-branded gas stations and convenience stores in the United States.
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