Yabu Pushelberg Comes to Aid With PPE for Toronto and Queens Hospitals

It was late March when a doctor friend of George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg expressed concern to the couple that masks were being rationed to two per day per employee at his hospital. That same night, the Yabu Pushelberg partners received an email from a property-developer friend in China: “Do you need masks? I have 100,000, and if you need more, I can get them.” Talk about serendipity. The designers immediately decided to “do what we could,” Pushelberg recalls, and launched a fundraiser to purchase PPE for hospitals in the two cities in which the firm has offices, Toronto and New York, designing this heartwarming logo to identify the drive. But that was just the beginning. Masks are subject to regulation before they can be imported. “That was the biggest hurdle,” Yabu explains. “Then the virus got worse and prices went crazy.” Partnering with the Bethune Medical Development Association of Canada proved a saving grace for navigating international procurement. Nearly $75,000 from 82 donors was raised, a sum now being transferred to BMDA to purchase PPE. Some will go to St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto and some to hard-hit Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. “What we’ve learned,” Yabu summates, “is we all have community—whether that’s family, friends, or colleagues—and can support each other.”