Mission
The Barnstable County 4-H and Youth Development
Program is dedicated to providing a positive, hands on
learning experience which builds character, develops
life skills and enables youth to become self directing,
productive members of society.
Involved Partners: OMK, Barnstable County 4-H, YMCA Cape Cod and Boys & Girls Club.
Anatomy of a Holiday Community Service Project
Thanks to a generous donation of holiday fabrics by Ella Fraser of Barnstable, Lorraine Fraser, who happens to be Ella's sister, and I began plotting and planning a holiday community service project in the summer of 2010.We decided on Christmas stockings to be used for our Stuff-a-Stocking program.Lorraine began sorting and cutting as each stocking required six layers of material and was able to make a couple of sample stockings.
We put together a holiday stocking workshop on November 6th at the Barnstable Senior Center, on the same day as their Holiday Craft Fair, and attracted about a dozen youth sewers, and another 8 adult volunteers. Youth were invited to make a stocking to donate to our Operation Military Kids project, and another one to take home.By the end of the day, each participant had a stocking "to go" and we had a pile of finished stockings, with yet another stack of stockings that had yet be finished. Bonnie, Sylvia, Ursula, Verlie and Lorraine each took some home to finish, and I spent one whole Friday at Lorraine's matching and stitching one stocking after another, as Lorraine pinned them and handed them to me one at a time. Lorraine then spent additional time adding the cuff to each stocking.To my surprise I arrived at my office one day in early December to find them all piled up in my chair!
The next step was collecting the stocking stuffers graciously donated by Dollar Tree of Plymouth, and YMCA Camp Lyndon who kindly helped me store and sort through the gifts in time for our “Breakfast with Santa” (at the YMCA) on December 6th.This is where the first batch was distributed. The next step was sorting through 19 bags of toys at the Southeast Alternative School and delivering them to the Otis Food Pantry during the storm on December 20th.The remainder of the toys were taken back to the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension to be tagged and “finished”. Here Steve Heaslip, from the Cape Cod Times, visited us for an article with photos on December 22nd (his photo is the one of Lorraine arranging the stockings-all other photos by Kerry) as we packed them up for the last time for delivery to children with parents deployed overseas during the holiday season...Phew!
A special thank you to Lorraine Fraser, an extraordinarily talented sewing instructor, for her leadership and follow through. Also, thank you to everyone who helped define the true meaning of the season by your contribution of time, talent, materials or space and for making my job one of the best jobs in the county.
