The Carolina Mask Project: May Progress Report

A lot has changed around here since March 21st, so we May as well take the time to update everyone on where we’re at and what we’ve accomplished so far! In April, we joined forces with two groups. As previously mentioned, The Carolina Mask Project works side by side with CLTgivePPE to help network and provide much needed reusable and disposable PPE items to those in need. Going into our 3rd week, we were fortunate enough to merge with Melinda Reljac’s Facebook group Face Masks For Health Care Providers in North Carolina, now named Carolina Masks (our public group), where she took on an organizational role in the project.

Mask Requests

Completed

The Carolina Mask Makers have been hard at work providing over 6,000 masks for 100+ requests. Groups like non-profit Empower for Hope and Charlotte business Idolize Brows and Beauty have been instrumental in helping provide masks using their team of mask makers. We are so grateful for everyone stepping up and working together to make such a huge impact on the Carolina communities who have been impacted by these unusual circumstances.

That doesn’t cover additional items like face shields, ear savers, and head coverings. But we’ll save that for another day, another post.

In Progress

Thanks to the drop boxes we’re able to fulfill many requests almost immediately for the Greater Charlotte area or to ship to areas that do not have volunteer groups. There are several requests in progress by groups around the Carolinas with requests still regularly coming in every week.

There are several requests we haven’t verified yet or that are unresponsive and have been put on hold until we can get in touch with the recipients.

Volunteers

North Carolina

Whether they’re in Charlotte, the Triangle area, Western North Carolina, or anywhere in between, the NC volunteers are over 200 strong. Because organizers Melinda and myself are based out of Charlotte, many of our volunteers are from the Greater Charlotte area. We now have a Triangle team, led by point-person Kate Ivers of The Forge Initiative, who are able to share materials and resources together.

South Carolina

When starting up the project, I turned to Dee Dee Davis of Decor Print who has helped amass a significant group of volunteers in the York County area. Decor Print offers a drop point for our mask makers in the area to help make it convenient to collect and distribute masks from the area volunteers. There are almost 100 mask makers in all of South Carolina from Myrtle Beach to Greenville.

Donations

Fundraiser

The fund is being put to good use for shipping and supplies. Now at over $2,000, we’ve spent a total of around $1000 which consists of shipping for supplies to volunteers, shipping masks to requests if necessary and purchasing supplies for the volunteers. We work hard to get material donations wherever possible and to keep shipping expenses down. Donations will continue to support these efforts and we are grateful for all the generous contributions.

Materials

The Material Share form captures donations and allows us to receive requests from volunteers to help us distribute needed supplies throughout the network. We also offer donation drives in the Greater Charlotte area to help meet the weekly needs of our largest volunteer groups.

Decor Print has supplied yards and yards of fabric and elastic for the mask makers, we are so fortunate to have a resource like Dee Dee on the team.

CSI Solutions has donated tons of colorful fabric samples for the Carolina Mask Makers to put to good use and compliment all the louder quilting prints that are so readily available.

The Triangle team was able to connect us with Cindy from UNC Face Shield Maker Initiative who offered us literal miles of elastic. Then a group of volunteers split the non-woven elastic and transported some of it to the Charlotte area for us to distribute throughout the volunteers. Many thanks to Elaine and Kate, et al for their help with getting us this much needed material.

Tacony Corporation contacted the website and was able to donate a large box of thread for us to get out to the volunteers. Thread is a precious commodity right now!

Nancy’s Notions also contacted the website and donated a large shipment of quilting fabric for the volunteers. We were able to turn many yards of fabric into scrub cap kits to help us with that need.

Each week, Joann Fabric & Craft in Pineville donates quilting fabric for us to distribute at the weekly volunteer drives and we are so grateful for their generosity!

Thank you for reading! It’s a lot to cover and we want to make sure include as many folks as possible who have helped us out so far. Stay tuned for further updates and more information on the blog.