As Mr. Rogers famously pointed out, when calamity strikes, watch out for the helpers. As awful as things may be, you can always take heart in the fact that people will go to lengths to help make things better, healing the wounded, feeding the hungry, and comforting the afflicted.
Iowa’s Deb Siggins is one of those people who just wanted to help her community during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and she found a cool way to put her creativity to use.
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Siggins, a 55-year-old knitting enthusiast from Lisbon, Iowa, initially answered a call for masks from her local hospital.
UnityPoint St. Luke’s Hospital was facing a shortage, so Siggins set herself a goal of making 100 masks to donate, she told Good Morning America .
However, friends and family also wanted some masks, and so with much more needed, Siggins didn’t stop working after she had delivered her first 100 to the hospital.
Siggins, who works in a doctor’s office, said that she felt compelled to use her skills to help her community.
“I just felt like [my sewing] is a gift that I could put it towards other people because it’s a gift that god has given me,” she said.
The trick was how to get the masks out to her friends, family, and neighbors while maintaining social distancing.
However, an idea for distributing the masks struck her when Easter rolled around.
Siggins and her husband usually decorate the tree out front of their house with eggs for Easter, but this year, it became a “giving tree,” decked out with Siggins’ homemade masks.
“It was hard to reach everybody so I just put on Facebook that I had a mask tree,” she said.
So far, the tree has been a hit.
And it has only become more so since the CDC started recommending the use of masks when in public spaces whether you’re displaying symptoms or not.
“It was really cool to see people driving up, grabbing a mask and leaving. … It’s been a hit,” she said. She says she loads the tree up with about 30 masks at a time and they’re first come-first serve.
Siggins covers all the material costs herself, and says that she’s happy to do so.
“I’m a giver, not a taker, so I feel really good,” she said. In all, between the masks she has put on the tree and donated to the hospital, fire department, grocery store workers, and more, she has made about 400 masks, and she says she has no intention of stopping until the need is gone.
Similar displays have been popping up in other communities as well.
It seems Siggins was onto something with her giving tree idea, as others have decked out their own trees with homemade masks out for anyone to take – just not quite with the same presentation as Siggins’ giving tree.
h/t: [Good Morning America]https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/living/story/woman-creates-giving-tree-hundreds-homemade-masks-local-70213343)
