Ryerson University is donating gloves, gowns and goggles to health care workers on the front lines of Toronto’s fight against COVID-19.

A team within the university’s chemistry and biology department rounded up 79,000 nitrile gloves, goggles and gowns to donate to St. Michael’s Hospital, Sunnybrook Hospital and Women’s College Hospital last week.

“I was listening to the news and thinking about the frontline workers, which include a niece of mine and cousins who are nurses, and I thought, ‘We have to do something’,” says chemistry professor Dan Foucher.

Foucher started with his own department, and then extended the reach of the donation collection to other teams within Ryerson with resounding success.

“I then put a call out to our other colleagues saying, ‘We’re doing a glove drive, if you’d like to donate, let us know’,” he says. “Usually when you send an email call out, people get back in 12 hours or so. Here, they did in 30 seconds. As scientists, we follow the science and it’s clear that we’re currently in an all-hands-on-deck situation.”

Foucher says, the collective effort helps alleviate some anxiety around feeling helpless in this time of crisis.

“I thought, if there’s anything that these frontline workers need, this is the time to step up and give whatever we have. All my colleagues agreed,” he says. “Everyone is watching the news and feeling tense, we’re all trying to get our courses online and provide direction and stay calm for our students, but this pay-it-forward philosophy, this helps shift some of that. There’s something that you can do.”