Location: United Lutheran Church
Date: Saturday, September 7, 2013; 10:00 am-1:00 pm
I had heard from Amy and Wilson
how much fun this project is and so was looking forward to attending. Wilson picked me up at 9 am, which meant that
we arrived at the Church at 9:20, way in advance of the 10 am start. We met Ruth, our site coordinator, who told
us to check-in on the computer. The
activity was going to be in a grand hall next to the church and lot of tables
and chairs had been set up. This was
because besides Chicago Cares there were other groups that would be
participating in the project, one of them being ‘Acacia Park Lutheran Church’, who had several senior ladies
attending and who needed help in checking-in on the computer and Wilson was
ever the gentleman in helping them do that.
I looked around the room and there was a table with some get-well soon
cards on it, and I learned that those were for Toni, a 90 year old regular
volunteer who was recovering from a broken arm. There
were several nice messages on them and even though I did not know the lady, I
added my good wishes as well. There was
also a table with coffee and lot of breakfast items on it, including homemade
cookies. Looks like I had chosen a right project to attend!
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| Can you believe this is made out of bags! |
It was getting close to the start
time and I carried a bucket of scissors and ensured that each seat had
one. Some other groups came in, such as ‘Capital One’, ‘Mathers’, ‘Dedicated Diva’s’
and of course Chicago Cares. The
room was now full and it was time for me to learn what we would be doing. The task was to take used plastic grocery
bags, and convert them into sleeping mats.
Now, as improbable as that sounded, there were actual examples of mats
and they looked fantastic, almost as if they were made out of fabric. The process starts with folding the bags and
cutting into squares. The squares
open up into loops, which are tied together as yarn. This yarn is rolled into a ball, which when
large enough, is crocheted into the mats.
This meant that there were 3 main groups of people; one cutting the
squares, a larger group making the yarn and then a few skilled ladies were
crocheting. I knew that crocheting would
be beyond my wildest dreams and there were enough people already cutting the
bags. So I decided how to learn to tie a
yarn and there were lot of mistakes.
This meant that I ruined a lot of bags, but eventually, I figured it out
and was ready to begin my career as a “yarn
maker”.
 |
| My ball of yarn |
While I was with Chicago Cares, I
was settled on a table with the Acacia group, which included 3 generations of
women, with mom, daughter and grandma team.
Also present was a lady, Liz, who kept asking why I was standing up
instead of sitting down. The truth was
that I found it more manageable to work with the long yarn while standing. It did not stop her from needling me,
especially when I told her that I had a Doctorate in plastics! I was rolling now and my ball was growing,
though not at the rate of some of the others.
I was beginning to realize that the quality of the bags made a huge difference
on whether the loop worked or not, like a weak link. This led to many rips in the bags, meaning that I had to
carefully untie the knots. The family at
my table was working together extremely well and the mom was now crocheting
very skillfully. In fact, there were a
lot of families that were working together and it seemed like a nice project
for everyone to get involved on a Saturday morning.
Wilson was helping with the food
services as well as carrying the garbage out when it accumulated. At one time I took a break to go to the
kitchen and Wilson mentioned that it takes a really long time to make a
mat. He thought that the labor that went
into making a mat for one person did not justify the purpose. Although he had a point, I disagreed. Ruth had told us earlier how these mats are
distributed to the homeless who put this on top of the cardboard's that they
usually use to sleep on. The difference
being, that now even if the cardboard got wet – which it invariably did – the
plastic bags would keep them from getting wet and cold. For me, one life changed makes a difference,
no matter how many people it takes.
Remember, “It made a difference to
that Starfish.”
 |
| Look at all of those mats! |
My yarn was growing and I was trying
to use different colored bags in order to infuse it with some character…well
whatever character can exist within a yarn made of plastic bags! It was amazing how the time had flown by and
we were almost at an end. Others on my
table had huge balls of yarn, and mine was nowhere close to theirs – a point
that Wilson reminded me of. However,
considering it was my first time, I thought that I had done a decent job. All the balls of yarn were collected in a
box, and some women even took a ball home to work on it in their spare time. Wilson was determined to leave the facility
spic and span, meaning we spent the next 30 minutes cleaning floors and
arranging the tables and chairs. I
washed all of the plates and mugs that had accumulated in the sink and then took
out the garbage. The post project
cleanup had been exhausting and I was ticked off that other groups had not
helped us in this endeavor. But then not
everyone is Wilson. Later that week I
received an email from Ruth with the statistics from our project and we had
collected 10 mats today – most bought by people who had taken yarn home. Besides this the collection pot had yielded
money for buying supplies such as crochet hook and scissors. And she also thanked the “cleaning crew”, saying, “And I have to give a SUPER HUGE shout out to the clean up crew. There is none better anywhere. They are sooooooo dedicated to leaving the space looking better than when we came. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!” So our efforts at the end had been appreciated. The mats were going to be delivered to ‘Morningstar Mission’ in Joliet, where
they would be handed to the homeless. Over the duration of this program, a total 651,000 bags had
been converted to 930 mats over 74,400 volunteer hours. So is Wilson right about the labor exceeding
the outcome? Perhaps yes. But try telling that to a homeless person
sleeping on a soaked piece of cardboard.
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