{"id":398096,"date":"2023-08-21T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-21T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=398096"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Friends-team-up-to-hold-relief-drive-for-Lahaina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Friends-team-up-to-hold-relief-drive-for-Lahaina\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends team up to hold relief drive for Lahaina"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four friends in the CNMI teamed up last Friday to host a donation drive at the United Filipino Organization pavilion in Oleai, with proceeds from the fundraiser to benefit the victims of the Lahaina wildfire in Maui, Hawaii, which has rendered thousands homeless.<\/p>\n

The donation drive began Monday last week and, since Wednesday, has been available 24 hours for even odd hour donations.<\/p>\n

Edwin Raymond Borja Quitugua, Herman Tudela, and Liana Hofschneider were onsite last Friday when Saipan Tribune went to the drive and they shared with the media a bit about the drive.<\/p>\n

For perishables, Quitugua said they will accept most things except cash and pastries. Their goal is to raise 12,000 cans of donations, which is equal to 500 cases, and if they receive more they would be grateful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to acknowledge the Filipino community because you guys really stepped up,\u201d he said, noting that the Leo Lions Club was the first to donate by giving a large amount of instant noodles.<\/p>\n

Hofschneider said, \u201cAs a small community I believe we went through a lot of our own challenges and natural disasters and we are a very fortunate people to have people coming from all over to help us rebuild as quickly as possible I know we are very resilient. Our history has told us that…but this time we are not the beneficiaries. This time we have to be the givers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group of friends wants to make sure that this drive has nothing to do with politics or any agenda\u2014they just wanted to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019m reaching out to the community. \u2026[Let\u2019s] put our differences aside and put our hearts together. All of us have big hearts; that\u2019s the beauty of our community. \u2026We\u2019ve got to show the people in Maui and Lahaina that we\u2019re\u2026going to be there for them. They stood for us and so we have stand for them,\u201d said Hofschneider.<\/p>\n

She said they would be accepting emergency supplies, baby diapers, solar lights, batteries etc.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you to all the donors that have been here. We really appreciate you. Please don\u2019t be a stranger and drop by. Whatever it is it\u2019s all welcome,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The relief drive is expected to continue until next week Saturday. Aug. 26.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Edwin Raymond Borja Quitugua, Herman Tudela, and Liana Hofschneider and their friend pose for a photo at the United Filipino Organization pavilion in Oleai last Friday in front of their relief drive for the victims of the Lahaina fires.<\/p>\n

-CHRYSTAL MARINO
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Four friends in the CNMI teamed up last Friday to host a donation drive at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}