By Ceoli Jacoby
Since Governor Larry Hogan issued a state-wide stay-at-home order on Monday, March 30, Marylanders have been stuck inside looking for new hobbies to pass the time.
Maryland residents Megan Lanier and Heather Harget are no exception. But they found a way to turn their cabin fever into community service: organizing groups of stitchers to make and donate cloth face masks.
Lanier, a homeschooling mother from Bowie, Maryland, is no stranger to the world of volunteering. In the 12 years she has stayed home with her children, she has lent her time to various other causes. When she learned of the shortage of personal protective equipment, or PPE, threatening to sicken essential workers, she knew she was needed once again. She took to Facebook, where she started the Sew Masks Central Maryland – Annapolis & Surrounding Counties group.
“It just exploded,” she said. “Our little group is up to over 300 members in less than two weeks.”
Harget, a middle school teacher from Parkville, Maryland, first heard about the PPE shortage via Twitter. She came across a video produced by a hospital in Georgia that featured nursing staff hard at work on sewing machines, assembling their own supplies.
The video prompted Harget to launch her own mask-making campaign: Million Mask Mayday MD, which primarily serves the northern part of the state. Her Facebook group has amassed a following of more than 200 users since its creation on March 21.
To meet the entire state’s massive need, Lanier and Harget have coordinated their efforts.
“Megan and I have been chatting back and forth to try to make sure that we are covering pretty much everywhere we can in the state of Maryland,” she said.
The pair has also been collaborating to come up with the most efficient way to make, collect and distribute the masks. The first step is taking requests: Marylanders in need of supplies contact the groups through Google Forms that collect information such as the number, sizes, and style of masks needed. Volunteers then get to work producing the masks based on their group’s approved patterns.
Ann Lamdin, a UMD alumna and retired attorney from Pasadena, Maryland, uses her quilting skills for mask-making as a volunteer with Lanier’s group.
“Sewing is a really nice hobby to have when something like this happens because it’s solitary…you hide out in your sewing room if you’re lucky enough to have one and do something that you enjoy. And it helps pass the time and it’s doing something that’s good for people,” she said.
The volunteers place their finished masks in a resealable plastic bag, wipe down the outside with a household cleaner, and place it in a storage container at their doorstep. From there, the masks are picked up by volunteer drivers and distributed.
“It’s been a real learning-as-we-go process, like everything with this virus and the lockdown,” said Lanier.
Most recipients of the groups’ cloth masks have been health care facilities, as they can be used to extend the lives of the N-95 masks that are in such high demand.
“We are in a war and right now the enemy is COVID-19. And if you take away the weapons that the people on the front lines need, which are your PPE’s, then you’re making it worse,” said Laura Ruiz, a registered nurse from Howard County, Maryland.
“The people who need to be on the front lines are getting sick, almost as though they’ve been captured and they’ve been put into jail, because they’re taken away from the front lines where they’re needed,” said Ruiz.
She says that the cloth masks can be used again and again, as long as wearers are replacing filter inserts as necessary and sanitizing them with hot water and a non-chlorine bleach.
“I’m hoping that if our cloth mask movement can grow a little bit…if we could kind of normalize people wearing homemade masks for the time being until the shortage resolves, that might help a little bit with the spread and, meanwhile, still keep the medical masks where they need to belong,” said Lanier.
The groups have also received requests from several institutions not directly involved with treating COVID-19 positive patients, such as addiction treatment centers, grocery stores and nursing homes.
“Groups like that where they’re essential workers and they’re having to come into contact with people, in some cases high-risk people, but they’re obviously low man on the totem pole for receiving medical masks right now…they’re just kind of desperate for anything,” Lanier said.
Combined, the groups have been able to donate hundreds of masks to those in need.
“I think everyone across the country is stepping in and saying ‘I can do my part,’” Harget said. “And if it’s sewing one mask or one hundred masks, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Featured photo courtesy of Megan Lanier.