Did you receive an unexplained bag of COVID safety gifts in the last week? If the wrapper was a purple tote bag instead of holiday themed, chances are it came from pandemic safety efforts. And it was not cheap, nor was the process to assemble and distribute it smooth.
The Chainbreaker Collective, Youthworks and the City of Santa Fe's Economic Development Department partnered to distribute 6,500 bags of COVID-19 safety materials by Christmas to areas within the city limits where cases are highest—the Southside.
The effort has run into multiple obstacles, including different supplies arriving at different times or not arriving at all.
The original plan was to distribute 10,000 bags by Dec. 31. But organizers ran out of hand sanitizer bottles and masks short of that goal. Promotional material the city ordered that had both COVID safety tips and more information about the source of the bags has also still not arrived.
"We're going to areas that are hardest hit," says Tomas Rivera, executive director of the Chainbreaker Collective, who noted more than 6,000 bags had been distributed as of this morning, with target areas including mobile home parks and apartment complexes. "These are folks that are generally vulnerable to health disparities in general. So this is low income people, areas that are largely people of color, people who are essential workers. We know that historically health disparities will affect people in these demographics higher."
Youthworks and Chainbreakers share the work of packing the bags, while Chainbreakers distributes them in the most socially-distanced way possible: dropping off the bags in front of doorways and leaving without knocking.
The days are long—16-hour shifts of packing and distributing around 500 bags per day, according to Marlon Guite, a staff member at Chainbreakers and the leader of a crew of five people.
"The effects are instant because the things in this bag can help the families protect themselves against the spread of the virus," Guite tells SFR. "We know that putting those bags there instantly helps."
The conversation between the city and the nonprofits for this project started the first week of November. Chainbreakers started distributing bags on Nov. 16.
CARES Act and city funds paid $92,537 for the initiative. Most of the cash for the project was used for buying masks: $32,500, while another $11,232 went to Santa Fe Spirits and Tumbleroot distilleries each for locally-made hand sanitizer and $6,723 was paid to the SOAP Refill Station for plastic bottles, according to the city. The tote bags cost $5,850.
Youthworks and Chainbreakers received $12,500 each for overhead, though that amount does not cover all of the "pro bono work" from the two organizations, according to the city. The figure also does not include labor costs for city staff or masks donated by other city and county departments.
"Everything did not come together perfectly coordinated," Liz Camacho, city economic development and communications administrator, tells SFR.
To recap the math: With 6,500 bags total planned for distribution, that's a gross per-bag price of $14.23. Camacho says it's difficult to calculate the per-bag price because of the leftover sanitizer and unused bags. (Her rough count is that about 3,500 tote bags will remain for a future purpose.)
There have been other hiccups along the way. For example, the first batch of bags distributed mostly over the previous two weeks, lacked information explaining the source or contents.
Jill Schwartz, a resident of the Zia Vista apartment complex on the Southside, tells SFR she and the other people in her building were confused by the purple bags left hanging on her door last week. She says her bag contained five small bottles of unmarked liquid and a list of COVID-related resources. There was no mask.
"Other people contacted our manager and he said people were bewildered," Schwartz says. "A lot of people threw it out."
Schwartz called LifeLink, one of the organizations she recognized listed on the sheet in the bag, but whoever she spoke with there did not know what the bag could be.
Guite says this issue has now been remedied with an informational card the canvassers stick on the door that explains what is in the bag and who it's from. (Chainbreakers also eventually added stickers to the hand sanitizer bottles, according to the city.)
"There were a few [bags] we didn't get to because we didn't have the cards yet, the first round or so," Guite tells SFR. "Then we started getting calls and we figured, they're right, we got to put something on there so they know what we're doing."