Student Quilt Project

I donated toward buying sewing machines for 8th graders who are sewing quilts for homeless youth in their community. Below is the teacher’s request:

Help me give my students working sewing machines so that they can continue with the volunteering they are doing by creating quilts that they are then donating to the homeless youth in our community! They are helping peers!

My Students
I am excited to work with the students in my school because they are welcoming to others and very community-minded. I recently asked the 8th graders if they thought that there were kids their age (13-14) that were homeless in the area and many knew that there were. They care about others and are excited to help.

The students at CP really care about working together and the unique population here (4-year-olds through 14-year-olds) allows the older students to be mentors to their younger peers!
This project will give them an opportunity to practice Reciprocity–an ethic we are learning about through this endeavor. They want to give back to their community to show thankfulness for all that they have!

This project will give them time to think about the need in their community and how they can give hope to kids that are not as fortunate as themselves. This also allows for some younger grade students to work with their older, middle school “buddies” on their projects! We have community volunteers who are excited to help with the quilt making as well! This is a fantastic opportunity for a group effort to make a change in our community!

My Project
We are well on our way with the quilt project! We have completed and delivered 5 quilts that will be given to homeless youth in our community of Kalispell, MT. The students have been working on their art projects that are being printed on the material and some of the middle schoolers are helping construct the quilts by hand. We have some older, used sewing machines, but most are not working, so the staff have been taking the material home to sew quilts on personal machines.

The middle school students are really understanding about the volunteering process and how impacting they can be when they all work together; I’d love to see them make the most difference by having sewing machines that work and that can be used to finish the quilts!

I am encouraging their experiences by giving back to their community and I want to provide opportunities for them to sew on working machines. The students can be part of an elective class here that teaches basic sewing machine skills, so the machines would be very useful for our rural school.