Local Service Group Brings Warmth to Patients

For Joanne Newman, community service coordinator for the Vinings Village Woman’s Club (VVWC), summertime is the perfect time to stock up on a staple for her community service projects: fleece. 

She buys yards of fleece — solid, patterned, colorful — while it's on sale in the warmer months. Come winter, she’ll get together with volunteers from VVWC and cut it into rectangles with slits down the sides, before bringing the fabric to Teasley Elementary School, where fifth graders tie the fringe together, the last step in creating lap blankets VVWC then donates to Shepherd Center patients. 

Leading up to the blanket-making, Joanne explains Shepherd Center’s mission to the students, giving them some context about the patients they are helping. She also occasionally drops off Spinal Column magazines for the students to peruse. 

“[One edition] happened to have pictures of the [facility] dogs. So, I encouraged them to draw pictures of the dogs helping the patients,” Joanne says. “I feel like I am opening their eyes to something they don’t know much about at that age. We as adults are very proud that we have Shepherd Center in Atlanta, but I think most of the kids don't know that.” 

After the kids finish the blankets, volunteers from VVWC carefully prepare each blanket for Shepherd Center. They wash and fold them, add them to an extra large Ziploc bag with a Valentine’s Day card (also handmade by the students) and a permanent marker — each blanket has a blank name tag, so the recipient can personalize it with the marker if they choose. 

Joanne calls the blanket making project, which VVWC has been doing in partnership with Shepherd Center for four years, “a win-win.” It benefits Shepherd Center patients, while also getting kids involved in community service. 

“One of our club philosophies is that we want to bring community service projects into the elementary schools,” she says. “We always write [the students] a thank you note afterwards, and hope that they realize they did something very nice that day. I always tell them, ‘Try to do something good every day.’” 

The blankets have benefitted patients across treatment programs, from those in inpatient rehabilitation to those receiving outpatient care in the Andrew C. Carlos Multiple Sclerosis Institute. The blankets are specially designed to be narrower, to reduce the risk of getting caught in wheelchair mechanisms, and they bring a bright spot to patients during dreary Georgia winters. Joanne, who’s been involved with VVWC for 44 years, credits her team of volunteers and her assistant, Margaret Hathaway, with helping her with the project year after year. 

“These projects would not happen without the number of wonderful volunteers in this organization,” she says. “I mean it's all volunteers, and all I have to say is, ‘We've got a project for Shepherd Center,’ and I have more volunteers than I need.”

Written by Erin Kenney