Jersey City Teen Orchestrates Massive Hand Sanitizer Donation

JERSEY CITY, NJ — Usually around August, kids are squeezing out their last bits of summer fun, eagerly waiting for back-to-school lists or just enjoying their time to do a bit of nothing — Ruhi and Reya Mehendale are not your usual kids.

The sisters have a passion for volunteerism and might just be some of the youngest donation organizers in the city. Ruhi, who is 13-years-old, coordinated the donation of 100,000 bottles of hand sanitizer for schools, shelters and residents after seeing the surge in the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I thought simple sanitization could keep needy citizens safe with the worsening virus spread. I connected with Mayor Fulop of Jersey City if he would be willing to help me distribute 100K hand sanitizer bottles to schools and homeless shelters. Mayor Fulop was fully supportive of my initiative and connected me to the right people who helped me get the job done.” Ruhi said.

The sisters are students at the Hamilton Park Montessori Elementary School, which has held volunteer programs and initiatives for students in collaboration with St. Anne's Shelter in the past. The girls said their past experience donating and volunteering felt so good, they didn't want to stop.

Mayor Steven Fulop met the girls to see the pallets of hand sanitizer unloaded and presented them with a proclamation. He said he gets a handful of emails from kids and teens each month, usually about a skate park or amenity they'd like added to the city, but the Mehendale's email was different.

"It's very abnormal for us to have young people saying 'I want to donate pallets upon pallets of XYZ' let alone hand sanitizer in a time of a pandemic, so this really was a wonderful thing," Fulop said.

The hand sanitizer made its way from Atlanta, GA to Jersey City through a family friend. Calls have already started trickling in from the Department of Education and city offices to get a piece of the hand sanitizer wealth. The details of exactly how the donation will be broken up aren't clear yet but schools and shelters are high on the priority list.