BALTIMORE — Just outside the doors of La Chow is where hundreds of items were separated and boxed up, ready for shipment.
Brandon M. Phillips says after the massive fires in California, he felt the need to help out in some way.
"There is a professor at Morgan State that I work closely with. He actually has a house in Altadena, and he showed me the pictures of his house being burnt down, and I told him about the initiative: How can we support? How can we help? And I want to take the magnitude of what we have here, there," says Brandon M. Phillips.
Stat DC, FutureThinkHub, and La Chow, along with partnerships from distributors like Amazon, Target, and Walmart, gathered large amounts of essential and non-essential items and food to send to California.
"So our goal is not just to feed you because, one, you don't even have a house, so we're picking items that you can still cook if you have a new home to live in, but also you can just eat on the go. We are also putting together items that help you rebuild your house," says Phillips.
Items like air mattresses, health and wellness products, comforters, electronics, and so much more.
"All those things that accumulate over time that people can't afford to just go and drop everything they have to go buy again, so we want to make sure they have some of those foundational things that they need to actually sustain in their household," says Brandon M. Phillips.
Phillips says he wants people to remember that although the fires were put out, many people are still left with nothing.
"We're not looking for nothing really in return; we only ask for some support so we can continue to do it, but it feels amazing to see someone see that someone is thinking about them," he says.
He also says he would not be able to do any of this if it wasn't for the partnerships he has.
"I have a group of people that tolerate may craziness. I might want to do something that seems impossible, and I say impossible isn't impossible until you start it," says Phillips.
And Phillips is not stopping there; he says he also has plans to help people dealing with the current fires in the Carolinas.
"Soon as we get notice the fires are out and we can have some destinations that are for disaster relief out in Carolina, we're going to do North Carolina and South Carolina, and that's going to be ongoing until we get these people what they need," he says.
The first shipment of items is scheduled to make it to California by March 9th.
