Valerie Xu, 15, organized the campaign, Masks Matter, which raised $7,500 toward the purchase of surgical and FFP2 respirator masks to aid health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the campaign, 12,000 masks were donated to UT Southwestern. In part, Valerie’s experience as a UT Southwestern patient when she was younger inspired her to start the campaign.

Transcript

My name is Valerie Xu.

I am in 9^th grade at Greenhill School.

Today I am donating about 12,000 masks under my campaign, Masks Matter.

The reason why I am donating these masks to UT Southwestern, is first of all, I’ve seen across the news a wide need for PPE for medical workers.

The main reason why I donated to UT Southwestern was because when I was younger I was admitted to part of UT Southwestern for a high-grade fever.

And, just all the medical workers at UT Southwestern helping me, really supporting me made me realize the importance of medical workers and the importance of that sort of stability and security at UT Southwestern during this pandemic.

It made me realize that I should be giving back the same way that they gave me proper treatment when I was sick.

We need people like medical workers, nurses, so on, to be the ones at the front lines to help protect us, which is why I think it’s so important for us to stay at home to help medical workers do their jobs since they are stepping into the front line to risk their lives to help save more people in our community.

I just want to say thank you for all your work.

We could not have been able to fight this virus without you.