Local Hero

For a father in Fargo, N.D., walking up and down the stairs of his two-level home several times a day would be a breeze — if he weren’t also hauling a 13-year-old boy in a wheelchair. “It’s phenomenal what people do to take care of their loved ones,” says Joyce Newton, executive director of Project HERO (Healthcare Equipment Recycling Organization, www.fmhero.org), which generously gave a stair lift to the family.

The stair lift joins other DME and medical supplies that Project HERO, in Moorhead, Minn., donates worldwide to people who otherwise would go without. Maybe their health insurance (if they have any) doesn’t cover the cost of that walker or wheelchair. Or they live in a third-world country with little DME access. Project HERO steps in with donated new and recycled items.

“We’re filling a niche for people who can’t afford them,” says Newton. “But we’re also about saving all this stuff from the landfills.”

Serving as a clearinghouse of sorts, the organization also provides wound care, personal hygiene and incontinence supplies for local use; and respiratory tubing, surgical drapes and other medical supplies for global missions.

More than a hundred different home health agencies, hospitals and clinics in northern Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota refer their clients to the group. Last year, the non-profit organization served about 800 local residents and 44 medical missions to dozens of countries.

Now with a staff of three and 500-plus volunteers, Project HERO also partners with Wheels of the World, Fargo, N.D.; Orphan Grain Train, Norfolk, Neb.; and Globus Relief, Salt Lake City. Their semi-trucks pull up for Project HERO’s excess DME, parts and medical supplies destined for natural-disaster victims in the United States and around the world.

It all started in a nurse’s garage in 1996.

The sight of perfectly good, and sterile, wound care supplies doomed for the dump made Deanna Micheli and two other operating room nurses at MeritCare Hospital cringe. So they got permission from the hospital to rescue it. Leftover gauze and surgical drapes may be illegal to use in this country, but what about in others where it’s desperately needed?

Word spread, and local hospitals and nursing homes began donating truckloads of supplies and DME, which a local lumberyard warehoused for free. By 2000, Project HERO became a nonprofit organization, and three years later began answering a growing local and regional DME need.

“Someone may come in for a cane but then see more items that they didn’t know they needed,” says Newton. “Our staff really care about our clients and take the time to ask a lot of questions and listen to their stories.” And nothing goes out the door that isn’t safe, sanitary and individually appropriate.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that a client doesn’t tell us how we’ve made a difference in their life or with their loved one,” says Newton. “And because so much is still being thrown away, there’s such potential, both nationally and globally, for huge social and environmental impact.”