Brazil Flood Relief

This fundraiser raised ~$12,500 USD in total impact within Microsoft 💸💸💸(thanks to MS Give match + LT group match). Over 60% of funds were raised after Jorge’s chickenizing campaign 🐔. During two trips, Leonardo and his crew helped 33 families, two shelters (for women/children), and two animal shelters. He focused on assisting families without shelter or donation access. The overall sentiment of people in Rio Grande do Sul (RS) was gloomy as most had lost furniture, cars, homes, and were currently without jobs due to the flood. However, Leonardo and his crew were able to deliver boxes of hope 🙏 to them.

Long version:

How did it start?

The Brazil flood fundraiser began with Leonardo (@leonardolima), who lives in Curitiba (~10-hour drive to Rio Grande do Sul). He has friends and colleagues who lost their homes and are struggling with day-to-day life due to this flood and wanted to help those in dire situations.

Trip #2 (June 14 - 17)

For the second trip, Leonardo and his crew focused on families who did not have access to support or donations through shelters. He reached out to 25 families, collected what they needed, and gathered their phone numbers and addresses, which helped calculate how many supplies were needed. It was heartbreaking to see how many of these families had young kids.

^ Redacting PII like a good security compliant engineer! 👩‍💻

After organizing and assessing their needs, Leonardo made a list of what the care packages would include.

With the funds we raised, he purchased 11 shopping carts worth of supplies for those families and boxed them for faster delivery.

Then, he drove 15 hours to RS. Luckily, the water level had gone down significantly. But many people felt hopeless as they had to discard wooden furniture and mattresses, realizing that the flood had taken so much of what they had built up over their lives.

While making deliveries, some streets were filled with garbage, making it impossible to drive through. Leonardo and his friend had to carry many kilograms of supplies for several blocks.

Trip #3 (July 10 - next few months)

For the third trip, Pedro could reach out to multiple other families and purchased a single high-impact household item for each—such as a sink, microwave, refrigerator, stove, or mattress—to immediately improve daily living after flood damage within ~$100 USD budget for each family. This significantly helped these displaced families quality of life, and boosted them from long road of recovery from the flood.

Execution

This was a joint effort across MSAI (and Leonardo’s friend and girlfriend). And Pedro for mission #3. Thank you everyone for your help and delivering hope!