This article was updated on April 27 with new information.
Coronavirus has changed the lives of many across the state, and a Facebook group of Phoenix residents is sewing to fight the spread of the virus.
The group, Mask Phoenix! (sewing masks to fill critical needs created by COVID-19), was started by Phoenix local Kristi Hoven. Hoven said a healthcare friend who knew she could sew asked her to make a mask for her and that was when she noticed the need for masks in the community.
“That led me to discover that a bunch of people need help and our community is filled with helpers,” Hoven said.
The project has grown by leaps and bounds since the group was created on March 20. By the end of March, the group was nearing 300 members, and by mid-April the group had more than doubled with 680 sewers, donors and general volunteers.
Now, Hoven is spending her time during social distancing mainly sewing masks but also works to coordinate supplies and helpers to get masks to those requesting help from the group.
If there was one takeaway Hoven had from starting the Mask Phoenix!, it was that the community has the power to do good.
“When we focus on helping others, it’s something we can control and something we can feel good about,” Hoven said.
These masks became even more sought after when the CDC released a recommendation on April 13 for people across the U.S. to wear cloth face coverings in public to slow the spread of COVID-19. They also explained that community members should use cloth masks to save surgical masks and N-95 respirators for healthcare workers and medical first responders.
The Mask Phoenix! project has brought together mothers, fathers, retirees, and more all with one goal: To get masks to those that need them.
The project has donated to a variety of places that need them including hospitals, homeless shelters and school districts.
Crystal Lutton, a valley resident of 34 years, began sewing masks as a way to protect her daughter who planned to take a flight in March when people started asking to purchase masks from her. Now she says she uses the funds made from selling masks to be able to purchase material to make more to donate.
She became a part of the Facebook group when a friend added her and explained that even with the number of people volunteering the demand for masks locally and across the country is more than the group can produce alone.
“Even with all of us sewing here in the Valley and across the country there is still so much need,” Lutton said.
Banner Health and HonorHealth are just some of the many healthcare institutions asking for homemade cloth masks to be donated for healthcare providers not working with COVID-19 patients.
Christine Neville Nelson is another of the local volunteers helping to donate masks locally. She began her work on masks by helping her parents establish a group to create masks in San Antonio, Texas.
After seeing the growth the community she helped set up in Texas had, she sought out a way to donate and help fight COVID-19 on a local level. A quick Facebook post later and the mother of three became a part of a group that she says makes her focus on what is still good.
“I could easily be sitting at home wallowing in depression,” Nelson said. “These are historic times and I don’t want that to be my memory.”
As a family member of frontline healthcare providers herself, Nelson said she understands the need for protection and ways to keep others and yourself safe. While Nelson has sewn more than 100 masks herself, she has also worked to cut fabric, elastic, and nose wires to donate for others to sew.
Decades of collected fabric meant to be made into quilts for her daughter became the fabric that Nelson used to turn into masks for local healthcare workers.
She hopes that more can be inspired by the work being done by these local volunteers to join and help fulfill the requests for more than 4,000 masks that the group has received. The group is looking for people that can sew, have a sewing machine and are willing to learn, or even just people to cut fabric.
“Join our group and say ‘Hey, I have scissors and I can cut, I just need fabric,’” Nelson said. “There’s a lot of people that have that fabric.”
Contact the reporter at haobrien@asu.edu.
