Masks For Healthcare Workers
Grace, Illinois
Tell us a little about yourself!
I am a physical therapist by profession and I love to run.
Because my work as a PT is in an outpatient setting, we had less patients coming to us as The state of Illinois was sheltering in place and my work hours have been cut into half.
I got engaged on my birthday in 2017 And yes, we were supposed to have a wedding in August in the Philippines this year and we have sent out our invites and all, but we just postponed everything that we have planned for the wedding for the last 2+years because of the pandemic.
My fiancé and I could not ask anybody to travel to the wedding and get them sick. The safety and health of everyone is our priority for now. We are hoping we could do it next year though.
Tell us about your #MakeWaves project.
I picked up sewing barely a year ago. I attended basic sewing classes since I had to to figure out how to hem my pants instead of asking my younger sister to do it for me.
With my work hours lessened, I decided to sew masks out of the cloth i had in stock at home for nurses and healthcare workers in my life.
It started from there and they were asking for more! I began sewing on my days off and after work. My fiancé helped me cut the patterns since he also wanted to help. We had to get more materials since the need was greater than what we had at home. Thank goodness for online shopping and curb side pick up, we were able to get what we needed little by little.
We have donated masks to hospitals, people from our local post office, And essential workers. Our friends and family have asked for masks and donated to help us cover for the cost of materials.
So far we have made a total of 477 masks to date. We never knew we would get this far.
Who inspired you?
We wanted to help our community, especially healthcare workers and essential workers. We wanted to contribute to helping our community.
Your message to the community:
Thank you Vessi for rewarding the people who have contributed to the society during these unprecedented times. Let’s be kind to one another and #makewaves😊
Updates:
We have now made over 464 masks!
