A group of Ashdown, Ark., high school students put hundreds of hours of work into helping the less fortunate by crocheting mats out of plastic bags. The mats can be used by the homeless who sleep outside or in tents to create a barrier between their body and the ground, thereby protecting them from the elements.
Wednesday morning, those students and their teacher Alicia McCormack donated those 10 handmade mats to Mission, Texarkana Inc., an organization that has several programs to help the homeless and less fortunate including providing breakfast and lunch to those who are hungry, a job training program and other support services.
Making the mats started out as a school project but became a labor of love for the students who met in a focus group once a week for 30 minutes.
Once they decided what they would work on they had to get donations of plastic bags because each mat takes 500 to 700 bags.
"We had to learn how to fold and cut them to get 'plarn' or plastic yarn," said McCormack. "We thought this was a perfect project for them to do because it's free and I was wanting them to see how blessed they are and the different ways they can help or volunteer. Even though they're in high school, there are things they can do to volunteer and help others and I think we accomplished the goal of teaching them that. I think they realize now there's a world out there besides their world. There's a lot of diversity and this helped take the focus off themselves and put it somewhere else."
Ramiah Williams, a junior at Ashdown, really enjoyed helping with the project. She learned how to crochet and liked it so much she started crocheting at home in her free time.
But even more she liked the way helping others made her feel.
"I learned I could help somebody by doing something small and how that made me feel I want to make others feel," she said. "I felt for them and it made me want to get it done so they'd have what they need."
Williams plans to start volunteering at Mission Texarkana when she turns 17, the minimum age for volunteers there.
After students delivered the mats, Cody Howard, executive director of Mission Texarkana, spoke to the students about what the organization does.
"Our main goal is to communicate the gospel to the community and we do that by taking care of needs," he said. "We fed 53 people breakfast this morning and that's a small to medium size group. We feed 150 to 300 people lunch each day during the summer. We try to get to know everyone and to encourage them to be productive if indeed they can. Not all of them can."
"We deal with a lot of mental instability. That's the reason many of them are out on the streets. It's difficult to get them into treatment and once you do it's often difficult to get them to take their meds. The weight of responsibility is heavy. You grow up and have a house, bills and a million things to juggle at one time and some of them don't have the mental capacity," Howard said.
Mission Texarkana is supported by local Baptist churches and receives no federal funding.
"We have an incredible base of volunteers from area churches and we are primarily funded and staffed by (volunteers from) area Baptist churches," he said.
The group of students has already decided their next project, collecting personal toiletry items for the less fortunate. Donations of items can be dropped off at Ashdown High School from April 8 through April 26.