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Corona
Cushions Going to Haitians
ANATOMIC GLOBAL: The firm has set aside space
to produce
1,000 water-resistant beds a week for
earthquake victims
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
By KIMBERLY PIERCEALL
The Press-Enterprise
A Corona-based mattress maker has dispatched
a small team to Haiti to deliver beds to
Haitians displaced by the Jan. 12 earthquake and
has pledged to use any operating profits from
its first quarter in order to make the cushions.
Anatomic Global, a memory-foam mattress maker
based in Corona, has set aside space in its
factory to produce about 1,000 three-inch-thick
water-resistant beds a week for its subsidiary
The WorldBed Project.
The beds cost $36 each to make and ship.
Anatomic Global has agreed to pay for the cost
of making up to 30,000 beds and hopes to raise
funds to manufacture another 170,000 to deliver
to Port-au-Prince throughout 2010.
WorldBed's executive director Patrick
Johnson, program director Laura Castro and
Veronica Alif, communications director, left for
Haiti Monday.
The team plans to return to Corona on Sunday
after assessing the need for beds in Haiti.
Eight shipping pallets with about 400
vacuum-packed beds had been shipped to Miami
recently to be put on a boat for delivery to
Port-au-Prince. The team intended to help
another organization hand out 1,000 more beds
that had been shipped in February.
Prior to that, another 2,612 beds had been
delivered, Alif said before she left for Haiti.
In an e-mail, Alif wrote that many relief
shipments have been held up at the Dominican
Republic border and Haiti ports that have
sustained earthquake damage. She said the
company hoped to ship another 1,800 beds by next
Monday.
According to relief agency USAID, there have
been about 700,000 people displaced in the
Port-au-Prince metropolitan area as a result of
the earthquake.
The WorldBed Project has been working with
other relief organizations including World
Vision, CARE and World Hope International, Alif
said.
For more information about the company's
initiative visit
www.WorldBed.org.
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