{"id":26666,"date":"2020-06-04T18:14:17","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T22:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26666"},"modified":"2020-06-08T17:43:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-08T21:43:49","slug":"homemade-masks-for-hometown-heroes-has-helped-protect-more-than-10000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/homemade-masks-for-hometown-heroes-has-helped-protect-more-than-10000\/","title":{"rendered":"Homemade Masks for Hometown Heroes has helped protect more than 10,000"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the mother of a nurse, the global pandemic has been a\nparticularly worrying time for Lissa Dwyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding herself in lockdown, worrying for her daughter\u2019s safety,\nand unable to indulge in the hobbies and passions that would otherwise occupy\nher time, the Aurora woman was looking for a way to channel her energy in a way\nthat was both satisfying and productive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An avid \u201csewist\u201d for a local theatre company, she found a\nperfect outlet with Homemade Masks for Hometown Heroes of York Region, a\ncollective of nearly 30 individuals who know their way around a sewing needle, dedicating\ntheir time and talents to craft nearly 13,000 face masks for individuals and\norganizations in need across the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSewing has been always been a way I have been able to\ngive back in different ways,\u201d says Ms. Dwyer. \u201cFor the first couple of weeks,\nit was a matter of hunkering down and \u2018wait and see\u2019 but my mom is in a\nretirement home and I ended up making 100 masks for them. After that was done,\nI found there were lots of other places that needed them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a reality that Homemade Masks for Hometown Heroes\n(HM4HH) knows all too well and it is here that Ms. Dwyer found like-minded\nindividuals looking to help in any way they could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wide-reaching organization, efforts in Aurora and King\nhave been spearheaded by Maureen Casey, herself the mother of a paramedic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have no sewing talent, but when things completely\nchanged in the world and everything stopped, I just needed something new to do,\na new challenge,\u201d says Ms. Casey. \u201cI hadn\u2019t sewn in years, but I borrowed a\nmachine from a friend, who dropped it on my porch \u2013 and it was an easy machine,\nthank goodness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She laughs when she thinks back to those early days back\nbehind the sewing machine, dragging 100 per cent cotton bed sheets out of her\nlinen closet and taking a full week to sew 50 masks when fellow HM4HH members\u2019\noutput was considerably higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy March 30, I had done about 100 masks, I was exhausted\nmentally because of it, but the group had just exploded,\u201d she says. \u201cWe had no\nidea; we thought this was just going to be a handful of our friends doing it\nfor the community, but the requests were just coming in like crazy. We had all\nthese people just jumping on board and that is when they decided we needed some\nextra help. I gladly put up my hand and said, \u2018I\u2019m not the best sewist, so I\nthink I am better coordinating!\u2019 From then on, I just started coordinating and\nleft it up to the professionals to do the rest!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coordinating the group, they moved forward with a sole\nmandate: filling the gap. They saw their work as a temporary stop-gap because,\nat the time, the wearing of hand-sewn masks was not yet encouraged by public\nhealth officials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really had to soldier through for a few weeks when\nthere were people telling us not to do it,\u201d she recalls, \u201cbut the healthcare\nworkers were the ones begging us. We put together a request list that went\nonline, so we were able to track everything and it just got so big. All of our\nrequests were coming from healthcare workers and that was just so telling that\neven if the regulations and the mandates from governments hadn\u2019t caught up yet,\nwe knew the need was there and we were going to be ready to supply it to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, need wasn\u2019t expressed solely from healthcare\nworkers. Organizations like the Aurora Food Pantry and Welcoming Arms, which\nrecently received a donation of 100 masks from HM4HH, were also identified and\nindividuals involved in each of these organizations began spreading the word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is really about making a connection,\u201d says Ms. Casey.\n\u201cBecause Aurora doesn\u2019t have a healthcare institution like Southlake where\nthere are hundreds of nurses that can live all over, we had to compartmentalize.\nIf you were making a mask in Aurora we wanted to keep that mask in Aurora. We\nwent down the list and pooled our resources to supply masks where the greatest\nneeds were. It\u2019s a matter of digging down deeper and finding those connectors\nin the community. Once you make those connectors, they already have their\norganization in place and this just supplements that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These connectors have not only helped HM4HH identify\nwhere their masks can go, but helped them source material. Organizations like\nthe Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre and several fabric stores have stepped up to the\nplate with material donations, as have individuals \u2013 including a local woman\nwho inherited her mother\u2019s button collection deciding it was finally time to\nlet go of the collection so they could be used for hand-sewn caps for first\nresponders, the buttons serving to secure face masks and save the pressure on\ntheir ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had no idea how huge this was going to be and whether\nhospitals would be overwhelmed,\u201d says Ms. Casey. \u201cIt was a very worrying time.\nIt has almost become the new normal, you feel much more comfortable, although\nyou\u2019re still on guard. All of these people who had nothing to do but wanted to\ncontribute and wanted to provide some sort of value and feel as though they\nwere contributing, but they couldn\u2019t go anywhere, they couldn\u2019t do anything.\nAll we were told was the best way to contribute was staying home, which is\ntrue, but while you\u2019re at home, what can you do? It provided such a wonderful\npurpose for hundreds of people who got out their sewing machines and took on a\ntask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough the needs have been met currently, and we feel\nas though we have met our mandate, we don\u2019t know what the future is going to\nhold in terms of a second wave, so we\u2019re not stopping, we\u2019re preparing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help Homemade Masks for Hometown Heroes, contact Aurora\/King coordinator Maureen Casey at maureen.casey@hotmail.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the mother of a nurse, the global pandemic has been a particularly worrying time for Lissa Dwyer. Finding herself in lockdown, worrying for her daughter\u2019s safety, and unable to indulge in the hobbies and passions that would otherwise occupy her time, the Aurora woman was looking for a way to channel her energy in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/2020-06-04-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6W6","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 06:53:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}