Recently, the Ross Medical Education Center Taylor, Michigan campus has been busy adding to the tab – the pop tab that is! The staff, faculty, and students from the Taylor campus have been working with the Ronald McDonald House of Detroit to collect pop tabs from soda cans. In fact, one of the students in Taylor’s own Medical Assistant program, Shauna Corbiere, donated a whole container of pop tabs for the cause.
Being a mother herself, Shauna has personal ties to the Ronald McDonald organization and what they provide. Althought it seems like such a simple, and even insignificant gesture, collecting the pop tabs helps tremendously to support the operations of Ronald McDonald Houses across the country. What the Ronald McDonald House essentially does is keep families together that may be going through a tough time. In many of the situations, a child is sick, and in order for that child to receive the proper diagnoses and treatment, parents and families often have to travel away from home to find the best facility. As you can imagine, this is costly and takes a toll on the child and their family as they are forced to live away from home and also to continue to raise their other children with some level of normalcy as well as take care of themselves.
The mission of the Ronald McDonald House is “to provide a home away from home,” and they strive to establish that kind of atmosphere. The organization believes that while any family is going through a tremendous hurdle such as a sick child, the last thing they should have to worry about are the everyday life tasks such as cleaning, grocery shopping, or cooking meals. The Ronald McDonald House therefore offers a house in which the family can stay for the duration of the child’s treatment. Included with the house are home cooked meals, private bedrooms, and even playrooms for children. Depending on the house, special suites for children with suppressed immune systems, accredited education programs, recreational activities, non-clinical support services, and sibling support services may also be available.
This is where the pop tabs make their unlikely entrance. Through donations of this portion of the can, the Ronald McDonald House receives back funds to help keep their programs in motion. Unlike the rest of the can, the tab is pure aluminum, and it doesn’t contain unwanted paint and residue. The tabs are also small, so they are more easily collected. After the tabs are collected, the Ronald McDonald House takes the pop tabs to local recycling centers where they are weighed to have their value determined. Proceeds from the tab collections provide funding for all needs of the residents of the Ronald McDonald House program.
To learn more about this program or the organization, visit the Ronald McDonald House Facebook page or their website at www.rmhc.org.