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Mask Donation Drive.
Your donation and volunteer help can help flatten our curve
THIS DRIVE HAS CONCLUDED
your donations and volunteer
support can flatten our curve
help keep our community safe

With news that the Center for Disease Control is recommending that Americans wear masks to decrease the community spread of COVID-19, The Village Square wants to support local start-up efforts to make face masks — and provide them especially to medical personnel and essential personnel at high risk in the community. You can get more information on the various local efforts by clicking the “Face Mask Projects” button below. Check out mask making efforts in our community at https://www.tallahassee.com/story/masks

How you can help:

1. Make a donation for supplies to make masks. The Village Square will immediately make your entire donation available (less the small Stripe processing fee) to volunteer mask-making efforts to purchase mask supplies (and/or pay tailors to make masks, as funds allow). You can make your donation here. This is the urgent immediate need, before supplies are gone. (Please click on “Face Mask Projects” button below to learn about the mask projects we’re supporting.)

(You may also make your donations to “The Village Square” and mail them to The Village Square, PO Box 10352, Tallahassee, FL 32302. Be sure to write “masks” in the memo line. This option means mask-making efforts get every single penny of your donation.)

2. There is need for volunteers to sew these masks. Do you have sewing ability? The wonderful Women Wednesdays has a sign-up tool where you can volunteer to either make single masks for people who request them. You can also make yourself available to make specific designs using full kits – provided by Masks for Tallahassee and/or medical partners. The second option will help medical and essential personnel at risk in our community have protection. (You will designate either or both options when you sign up here.) There are more mask requests than mask-makers, so we need you!

3. Delivery. Are you willing to pick finished masks up from seamstresses and drop finished masks off at designated locations? Sign up here.

4. Phone calls. We need helpers to be in touch with the specific needs of at-risk essential personnel in the community. Contact Liz if you are willing to make calls.

5. Organizers. Are you a great ball-juggler who would like to contribute your talents to helping things stay organized? Contact Liz.

Note that this is a community-level volunteer response and that masks offer various levels of protection. These efforts are intended to serve people who cannot get a mask that is commercially available. If you wear a mask the CDC stresses that you continue to practice all the safety standards you would practice if not wearing a mask (social distance, washing your hands, not touching your face, staying at home). Please stay up to date on guidance from the Center for Disease Control.

Click here to see the
FACE MASK PROJECTS

Masks for Tallahassee. This effort is led by an entrepreneurial team with 3D printing capacity to produce masks. Because some of our fellow citizens are in jobs that support critical infrastructure and capacity, Masks for Tallahassee will be prioritizing getting them masks. Volunteers will get “build packets” with all the supplies to make 10 masks. (Not sure? You can download sewing directions here or see an instructional video here.) Are you a provider of higher-risk essential services in the community and need masks (includes cashiers, delivery people, others who offer necessary services and have to be in contact with the public)? Make your request here or contact Liz.

Rags2Bags. Originally tasked with making reusable shopping bags, this powerful team of heroes has been mobilizing their talents now to sew fabric masks (and have already made hundreds). On an ongoing basis they will have a weekly pick-up of materials and and drop-off of completed masks event:

11-2 EVERY Thursday
Faith Presbyterian Church Manna cottage
2200 N. Meridian Road (across the parking lot from the church office)

You can find a video about making these masks here. And a video about making double fold binding for ties here here. And here are alternative tie options listed here, visual instructions here and general instructions here.

There is also a private group of sewers working hard to provide medical-grade masks to the medical community. If that’s your interest and your sewing skills are fairly strong (to follow important construction guidelines) email Ruth. (We are using our resource to find and purchase more of this special material.)

Women Wednesdays is connecting people who need masks to people willing to make masks. Sign up for either here.

Got more ideas for how our community can mobilize? Contact us.

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