Intermountain Healthcare Caregivers Donate 47,000 Items to the Homeless at The Road Home

Intermountain Healthcare caregivers and its Community Health team have donated more than 47,000 clothing and hygiene items to The Road Home, Salt Lake's homeless shelter. Together, Intermountain provided vital hygiene products, supplies and clothing for the shelter.

The Road Home is the largest homeless shelter in Utah. In addition to operating a single-adult and family shelters in Salt Lake City and Midvale, they provide case management, mental health services, employment services, children's programming, housing programs, and more. They annually support roughly 10,000 individuals, including more than 1,000 children and infants.

"The Road Home is a very mission-driven organization, like Intermountain Healthcare," said Greg Johnson, Intermountain's vice president of Finance. Johnson has volunteered at the shelter since 2008 and was recently elected as chair of the shelter's board of directors. "Those donations are very meaningful to the people receiving them because they're in limited supply," said Johnson.

Matt Minkevitch, The Road Home’s executive director, said, "I've learned to never underestimate the smallest of contributions — some soap, some shampoo, a change of clothing. That transformation of feeling cold, wet, dirty, and abandoned, to feeling clean, warm, and dry — you can see a transformation in a person."

The donation from Intermountain included:

• 6,624 personal bottles of shampoo
• 1,800 boxes of feminine pads (32,400 pads)
• 700 bottles of family-sized shampoo
• 5,390 pairs of socks
• 2,285 pair of underwear

"As we take on service projects, it unites us," Johnson said. "We can come together and have a singular focus. There are many needs in our community. As your life circumstances permit, look for them because the rewards are significant. There's a tremendous amount of satisfaction in supporting meaningful organizations such as The Road Home."