Care Caps Needs Help

When I was new to Little Rock and before the kiddos nixed my free time, I volunteered with a wonderful group of ladies making care caps.  Once a month I went to the family home across the street from UAMS (where my husband worked and the girls were all born) to volunteer my time and sewing/pinning skills.  Care Caps is a non profit group that sews comfortable head coverings for cancer patients.  Mary started it to honor her sister after she lost her battle with cancer.  She goes to different locations with a trailer full of sewing machines and material.  Volunteers meet for about 4 hours and sew caps that will then be shipped to clinics all across the US and passed out free of charge to cancer patients.

 

It was a rewarding experience for me, both getting to be around such wonderfully sweet ladies that volunteer and helping people who have to fight such a horrible disease.  Mary sacrifices so much of her time (without pay) and keeps things running smoothly.  I continued to volunteer while pregnant with the twins (just moving from the sewing machines to pinning which I could do from a more comfortable seat on the couch).  Mary made two darling baby quilts for the twins which was such a nice surprise when I was half living at the hospital while the girls were in the NICU.  She is so giving.  After the twins arrived, I couldn't help any more.  But I did visit once in awhile (and slowed down production as the ladies oohed and aahed over the twins). 

 

Here are the twins on one of her quilts when they were 4 months old.

 

After nine years however the nonprofit is struggling financially.  There have been years where they dipped under and had cut back but now this is the second year in a row and they have cut back all they can.  The project takes about $28,000 annually to stay afloat, but fundraising efforts the last two years have brought in only $21,000 annually. Unfortunately, with the worst case scenario (“no donations”), Care Caps will end in June. 

 

If you are interested in helping out a wonderful small charity, this is the link for their donation pledge page.  They don't take credit cards unfortunately.  You'll have to mail in a check if you want to help out.  Another way to help if you purchase things from amazon.com is to go to smile.amazon.com and enter Volunteer America—1776 (which is Care Caps official name) under donation charity and then use the smile.amazon page every time you shop there.  Every little bit helps and would be much appreciated.