Super Warmers!
This morning Racine woke up to a coat of frost on the ground and people’s windshields. It is the winter season and for outreach that means keeping people who are outside warm until they are in shelter or housing. We provide warm blankets, sleeping bags, and thermal socks at night to those are on the streets. We also include hand warmers in our winter street outreach kit. By quantity, we provide more of these to people experiencing homelessness than anything else through the winter.
Hand warmers come in a plastic package. They are small, paper-like packets that become warm when the package is opened and they are exposed to the air. They warm cold hands, cold feet, and cold bodies. People also open them and put them under blankets and in sleeping bags to warm them up before bedding down for the night. They are extremely helpful and very much appreciated by the people we serve on the streets.
Although we don’t usually endorse specific products, we learned through experience that people gave a lot of unsolicited positive feedback about Super Warmers, and often requested them specifically if we have them in our kit. Super Warmers are a larger type of hand warmer made by Hot Hands. They are reliable (always get warm), warm, and long lasting. A Super Warmer stays warm all through the night.
We still have a long way to go as we enter the winter of 2020 - 2021. We don’t know how cold it is going to get, but… we are in Wisconsin. We hope to keep Super Warmers in stock in our outreach kits throughout the season. We are fortunate that so far people from our generous community bring them in as in-kind donations and we have never had to purchase any hand warmers, blankets, or thermal socks. That’s one of the reasons we love Racine!