Leveraging our Resources to Make our Communities Stronger
As one of the largest hospitality companies in the world, we have a particular responsibility to ensure the communities in which we work and call home are great places for both our guests to visit and our Team Members and neighbors to live. From large-scale volunteer efforts driven by Sands Cares to sustainability initiatives spearheaded by Sands ECO360, we approach this mission at the granular level, and also leverage our resources to affect change on a much larger scale, as well.
Throughout our history, Sands has focused on supporting our business regions, the benefits of which often reverberate beyond our communities. Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) has long been at the forefront of our focus, through both direct donation efforts and support of our community partners; we also emphasize disaster response efforts, as well, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In early 2020, COVID-19 disrupted life around the world, including, of course, in our home communities, and the immediate impact on public health was compounded by an initial shortage of personal protective equipment, or PPE. Calling upon partnerships fostered over the years, we were able to procure two million surgical masks, and over 20,000 protective suits, delivering them directly to healthcare and other frontline professionals in both New York and Las Vegas.
Our response to critical need issues in our communities is not limited to responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through partnerships with organizations like Americares and All Hands And Hearts, Sands is also focusing on the long-term protection of our communities. From helping communities be prepared for potential disaster situations before they occur, to providing the resources needed to help communities rebuild afterward, we invest in capacity-building and resiliency efforts in all our business regions.
More than just responding to disaster situations, though, we support organizations and causes working at the ground level to protect the health and hygiene of those most vulnerable. Organizations like Clean the World have long been a close, trusted partner, and have developed numerous innovative solutions to protecting public health. The Fresh Start mobile shower unit, which provides free showers to those most in need in our communities, is just one such example.
Committed to the health and safety of our communities, we are focused on leveraging our resources to the long-term benefit of the places we do business—and which we call home.