Author: Julianne Ouellet

Know the Facts

On Sunday May 1^st, 2016 one of Static Cleans’ own participated in the once 20-mile, now 10-mile Walk for Hunger put on by Project Bread. She walked alongside nearly 40,000 people at the 48^th Annual Walk for Hunger in Boston, MA.  As she was walking – she said her mind was racing. Sounds crazy, right? How can you walk and race at the same time?  Seems nearly impossible, doesn’t it? As you start to walk – your minds racing so naturally you want to walk faster to reach the finish line… or at least run to keep up with your thoughts. But that’s impossible to do when as you are walking along the path you read signs that include statistics of the poverty stricken community.

Some of the thoughts that went through her head: There are 9.6% of households in Massachusetts with some level of food insecurity. Of that 9.6%, 5.5% have a low food security and 4.1% have a very low food security. All households with children make up 19.2%.  This means that half  the population of households in Massachusetts that have children are not food secure. Half of them! How is that possible? How can we stop this? What can we do to help? In 2013, 10.6% of households in Massachusetts (nearly 700,000 adults and children) were food insecure. From the years of 2003 to 2013 – the food insecurity rate has gone up by 71%… and hasn’t moved since!

Community Solutions

There are numerous outreach programs available to help the food insecure community. Some of them include CNOP (Child Nutrition Outreach Program); Community Garden – where the community helps to garden land that provides crops; Farmer’s Markets are on the rise; Food Rescue – where fresh food is collected from restaurants and super markets and delivered to community organizations where it’s cooked & distributed; and Gleaning – which is where leftover crops from farmer’s fields can be used as they are not economically profitable to harvest. There are programs in place, but it’s up to us to bring awareness.

As she was walking alongside the nearly 40,000 people – one gentleman, a dad and his son stuck out in particular. How do you explain hunger to a child that barely understands what it means to be hungry because his belly is filled with food; his family is food secure. Well, this father explained that as much as our feet hurt from walking the 10 miles – the bellies of our brothers and sisters hurt, from hunger. Our feet hurt for the 10 miles and maybe the day after, but these men, women and children have hungry (or hurting) bellies every single day. It doesn’t go away.

How to Help

Support comes in many different shapes and sizes. Consider donating to the Walk for Hunger:  Every little bit helps. $25.00 provides a hot meal for fifteen people at a community supper program! (See if your company will match your donation!) Maybe you can’t provide financial support, but you can donate your time to a local shelter to help serve or prepare the food. Or maybe, just maybe you are a large corporation in the food industry that can help donate the food to a local shelter or even to next year’s Walk for Hunger! What better way to help others, support your community and get your name out there at the same time! Let’s walk for Hope… hope that things will be different in the future.

Resources: www.projectbread.org

Stepping Out of Our Comfort Zone

Like the flowers bloom, we have sprung into new growth, too.  Static Clean International no longer resides at 15 Adams Street Burlington, MA 01803 alongside Filter Sales & Service. We are now in a new location: 267 Boston Road Suite #8 North Billerica, MA 01862. We have grown out of our space in Burlington, but … we still work very closely with Filter Sales & Service on cleanrooms and HEPA filtration. It is an integral part of our business to provide clean space and a controlled environment to our customers, mainly medical companies.

There was a lot of work and preparation in getting ready for the move. Not only was the building redesigned to fit our needs – but we had a lot of packing, unpacking, organizing, heavy lifting, many trips between locations and several weekends spent working to get the new digs up to our specifications.  One of our favorite rooms is our new conference room.  Furnished with a new Vizio flat screen television this will allow us to show our products better in a presentation as well as our vendors showcasing theirs to us. We also have a wide array of products on display. Our MCS-AS (automated medical cleaning station), Hepa Clean 3000 and Particle Trap® are now set up so that customers can bring their parts in and test out our equipment.

Slow Growth Bears the Best Fruit…

Static Clean has been steadily growing, so it was time to find our own space that includes a new 6,000 square foot manufacturing department. We now have more space for the production and development of new products. So stay tuned! As the business has grown, so has the employed staff. We needed a space that was large enough for our expanded production and to create more office space.

Chris Middleton, Manufacturing Supervisor, when asked how he felt about the move said, there is “more space, more room for growth and more efficient work space”.

Matthew Crothers, Customer Service Rep said, “This move for Static Clean brings us up to the next level of being a competitor in the field of static control and contamination control. We have a strong team that is working towards a cohesive goal of becoming a major player in this industry. Moving to this new building provides us with the space and ability for even more product development and efficiency. It is a step in the right direction”.

Jim Patterson, President said, “It is a big move for our company but with the anticipated growth we knew we had to move to a larger facility.”

The general consensus of the Static Clean team is that this move will provide us with the tools we need to bring this business to the next level.

John Maxwell once said, “If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone”..and we sure are growing. With the start of spring (minus the freak 6 inches of snow that New England got on the first day of spring), we have sprung into a new move. Our new facility is large enough that there is room for even more growth. A freak 6 inches of snow on the first day of spring is out of the realm of normal weather patterns this time of year (well, maybe not for New England), so you might need to wear warmer clothes to adapt to the changes. Just like the weather patterns change and you may need to step outside with snow boots in a month where the grass is supposed to be green, we need to continue learning and gaining knowledge so that as we do grow we remain #staticeliminator experts. “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain”… or snow! (Anonymous, more recently attributed to Vivian Greene).