The “Build a Better Blanket” for the homeless project

Atlanta has been unusually cold this winter and, of course, there have been the usual jokes about “oh my! Atlanta had 1/2 inch of snow and schools were cancelled!”    But, the truth of the matter is, we’re a southern city unsuited and basically unprepared for frigid temperatures and any kind of snowfall. Our inability to deal with “winter” includes not only people who don’t know how to drive on snow, but also people who have no shelter or protection from the elements.

So, when Rivers (my 10 year old grandson) asked what the homeless people do when it’s really cold outside, it was the beginning of a project that consumed us for a matter of months.  I explained to him that for those who can’t get to a shelter, their only protection was a blanket. “What kind of blanket ?” he asked.  I admitted that I didn’t really know.   “Well, we should build a better blanket,” he said.

And so we did.  Rivers recruited two of his friends, Naomi Fleming and Brayden Watts, and together we met to figure out how to build a better blanket.  Since the kids didn’t want to assume that THEY knew what would be most useful “on the street,” they devised a questionnaire that we sent to the Outreach and Advocacy Center (OAC), who serves the homeless population in Atlanta.  The kids wanted to know what the guests felt was most important in a blanket.  Warmth? being waterproof? color? softness? they came up with 13 questions and 19 guests at the OAC answered.  After tallying the results, it was clear what was needed: a warm, waterproof, durable blanket that was easy to carry around.   We added “reasonable cost” to the list and got to work.

The kids tried out all kinds of different blanket fabrics but it became quickly obvious that fleece was going to be best.  Waterproofing that we could afford was tricker to figure out but after some intense web research, we learned that a vinyl table cloth not only provided waterproofing but was also well within our budget.

The project nearly failed when we began actually attaching the fleece to the vinyl. All the kids can sew, but handling that amount of material proved too challenging for their fledgling sewing skills. I thought about it for a week before I noticed a bottle of waterproof fabric glue in my studio.  Aha!  I knew the kids could glue the pieces together – and they did!

The last piece was the “easy to carry around” bit.  The solution:  A vinyl “stuff bag” that we lined with fleece that could also be used as a hoodie. With the project almost done, the kids found sponsors to pay for everything.  For each $20 donation, a person experiencing homelessness received a blanket, a hoodie and a $5.00 gift card for McDonalds.   We made 14 of the sets and took them to the OAC the next day to be distributed to those who most needed them.

If we had gotten these out earlier, would it have helped save the lives of any of the 8 homeless men who died from hypothermia this winter in Atlanta?  Honestly, probably not.  But maybe, who knows?  The important thing was that Rivers and Naomi and Brayden had a chance to put themselves in the shoes of someone different than themselves, to show them the respect of asking what they needed, not assuming they knew.  Most importantly the kids learned that lesson that we all need to remember, that everyone can do something to make a difference.

I am very proud of these kids and can’t wait to see what kind of project they come up with next year.  I’m ready!