Several Tampa Bay businesses created donation drives over the past week, collecting supplies ranging from shoes to baby formula as people gathered aid to send to Venezuela.
Two back-to-back earthquakes shook Venezuela’s Caribbean coast on June 24. As of Tuesday, more than 1,900 are dead and tens of thousands are still missing.
For many in the Tampa Bay area with connections to the country, the news was shocking and heartbreaking.
“I just felt horrible,” said Andrea Myers, chief marketing officer for the Floor Center of Tampa Bay. “I just cannot believe it’s one thing after another. We cannot catch a break in Venezuela.”
Though she’s lived in the U.S. for 25 years, Myers said she feels deeply for everyone in her native country. She quickly got to work calling high school friends to get updates and find out how she can help those impacted.
The Floor Center of Tampa Bay is among several businesses partnering with the Tampa Bay Latin Chamber to collect donations, including medication, medical supplies, nonperishable food and hygiene products, to send to Venezuela.
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The chamber, for which Myers is an ambassador, is teaming with businesses to coordinate donation drop-offs. But, she said, she knows many businesses with personal connections to Venezuela are also collecting donations.
“I honestly just say Google, ‘Venezuelan restaurant’ and go there,” Myers said. “You just need to make sure that they have an organization that they’re working with … who are actually going to be able to actually get to Venezuela.”
Mango Space, a co-working office in Tampa, is also collecting donations. CEO Bo Peng said several of the company’s clients are Venezuelan-owned.
“We’re very close to what’s happening,” Peng said. “So whatever we can do to support the relief effort, we’re really glad that we can help.”
There has been a lot of community support, he said, resulting in a lobby full of donations. People from all sorts of backgrounds and ethnicities are supporting the cause, he added, not just those with personal connections to Venezuela.
Getting the donations to Venezuela
While it’s easy to collect donations here in the U.S., chamber president Diana Walker said it’s “a little bit harder” to make sure it arrives at its intended destination.
“There’s a lot of red tape when you’re dealing with different governments,” she said.
While it’s one challenge to secure planes to transport physical donations, Walker said, it’s another to get permission to fly into Venezuela and then find ways to distribute the donations.
She advised to make sure whoever you’re donating to has a contact in Venezuela who can make sure your contributions will make it there.
ALSO READ: 'Surfside a hundred times over': South Florida journalist witnesses twin earthquakes in Venezuela
The chamber is partnering with Comandito Tampa, a group that Walker said was able to secure a charter plane to transport the donations to Venezuela. The chamber also has two members currently in Venezuela who she said are their boots on the ground.
But even better than physical donations, Walker encourages people to give money to trusted sources.
“Monetary donations are very valuable not just because they can buy things [in Venezuela and get it there a little bit quicker,” she said, “but because a lot of these people are probably going to be relocating soon and going to need some type of support in finding wherever their new home is going to be.”
Spreading the word
Though it’s been a week since the earthquakes, Myers reminds people that Venezuelans will “need the help for months on end.”
Another way to continue that help is through educating more people about what’s happening. A lot of the videos and posts being made are in Spanish, Myers said, which not everyone can understand. Creating English-language content can help more people understand the pain Venezuelans are going through, she said.
Every donation matters, Myers emphasized.
"Whether it's a couple bags of diapers or a whole case of diapers, it doesn't matter. Anything helps,” she said.
“Even after ‘the fab’ goes away from everybody posting on social media, I’m hoping we will continue (to help) as long as we can and as long as it’s needed.”
