Chapel Hill Branch Encourages the Community to Wear Eco-Friendly Cotton Masks in September and October 2020

In quarantine, masks have become a necessity in our daily lives. It’s important to have a selection of face masks that are effective, comfortable, and sustainable. Choosing to use a fabric mask is typically the better choice since we can use the same mask over and over again, while a surgical mask is made to be used only once. Re-usable masks are not only eco-friendly, but they’re also cheaper in the long run.

Our goal for this project is to encourage people to use a cotton mask. This would provide good protection for others, is eco-friendly, and can also show your personality. We first introduced the project at the group Zoom meeting held on Sep. 4^th, 2020. All our members showed great interest, enthusiasm, and support for the project. After three weeks of hard work, we have successfully made almost two hundred masks. And all masks have been donated to the neighborhoods and communities.

During this project, we learned not only the importance of every single step, but also the essentials of teamwork. During the process, from designing, measuring, cutting, ironing, and sewing until package and delivery, we have to double-check the accuracy of every single step. One mistake will cause more time to fix it. The most valuable experience we’ve learned this time is the importance of teamwork. The speed of the mask-making process has improved significantly after we decided to let one person cover only one or two steps. We couldn’t all work together this time due to the pandemic of Covid-19, however, even a small team, with only two or three people, would rapidly increase the number of masks made by working as a team. As they always say: Two heads are better than one. Together we can achieve more!

In the end, we would like to thank our parents. This project is very challenging for us since most of our team members have none or a little sewing experience before, and we couldn’t complete it without our parents’ generous support and help. Many thanks to the parent team!

Reported by Kevin Chen