Quilts for Ukraine
Students at Emerado Centennial School in Winkler are excited to know their handiwork will be keeping people warm half a world away this winter.
Throughout the 2022-2023 school year, students in the Gr. 7 human ecology courses used leftover material from their projects to help sew blankets for those in need in Ukraine.
“We were doing them once we had our finished projects done with the spare fabric so that none of it would go to waste,” explained Aliya Epp, who is in Gr. 8 now.
“We started by cutting out lots of pieces of fabric and then we had to sort them and then we started sewing them together,” added Macy Hildebrand. “It took a really long time to get all the pieces that we needed.”
Teacher Tammy Friesen shared it was a bit of a process, with the kids spending the year cutting 10×10-inch squares, designing 50×60-inch quilts, and then sewing the squares together.
That done, Friesen and her mother got together one evening to cut out backs for the blankets, and last fall she began the process of sewing the two pieces together. That work wrapped up just last month.
The end result was 10 warm and colourful quilts ready to be donated to Winkler’s Faith Mission, which sends aid items to people in need overseas.
“I think they turned out very well,” Epp said. “It took awhile, but it ended up working, and we all worked on it together.”
“It feels good to be able to do something for them [in Ukraine] even though we’re so far away,” Hildebrand added.
“It just feels good to support the people on the other side of the world that are less fortunate than us,” agreed Epp.
Friesen is pretty proud of the students for how eager they were to take on this project. Over the course of the year, upwards of 70 kids were involved.
“It was all the grade sevens whenever they had time left after their final projects,” she says. “We had a bunch of flannel left over and I thought, well, we don’t want to just throw it away.”
For some students, the war in Ukraine is a very personal one.
“Some of the kids that we have here are immigrants from Ukraine, so they know what it means,” Friesen says. “And just knowing that they were helping some other people was a big deal for all of them.
“Seeing their excitement to help other people, it’s amazing. We have wonderful kids here, and they have so many gifts.”
life-changing impact
Faith Mission executive director Nathan Elias stopped by the school last week to pick up the quilts.
“It’s great to get more involvement from our community,” he says, noting these blankets will be “life-changing” for the Ukrainians who receive them, as the war with Russia continues.
Faith Mission has containers of clothing, food, and other aid supplies going to the country regularly (13 containers in 2023 alone). These blankets will likely be on the February shipment.
“It’s pretty incredible to see the difference this stuff makes out there,” Elias says, adding they expect to ship 15 or 16 containers in 2024 to meet the growing needs.
The community came through for Faith Mission in a big way just before Christmas. This year’s gift box campaign beat its goal of 4,500 boxes by a wide margin—they were able to send 4,741 boxes to children in need.
“We had a lot of help from a lot of different types of groups, which was awesome,” Elias says, noting they are always looking for volunteers to help prepare donations for shipment.
“Right now we have lots of clothes. We have thrift stores that are calling to bring more clothes, but we’re to the point where we need to get more volunteers in to sort through some of the stuff we have there first.”
The mission is planning a round-the-clock clothing bailing-a-thon for Jan. 25-27 to try and get as many clothes ready for shipment as possible.
If you’d like to help out, contact Elias at 204-325-4086 or nathan@faithmission.ca for details.
