SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A Sioux Falls project is ramping up again this season to help keep people warm.
Tie blankets and blanket-making materials can be found all across Sonia Sotomayor Elementary School, ahead of Project Warm-Up this Saturday. At the event, volunteers will come to help make more blankets.
“On Saturday as the blankets are being brought in, we will be boxing them up and getting them ready to be delivered to schools on Monday. And so school-wide children will be getting them first. Newcomers to our country, kids who are classified as homeless. Maybe it’s families that have gone through a recent tragedy. They will all get blankets,” Project Warm-Up coordinator, Tracy Vik said.
For Kynleigh Berry, the project is something she’s been involved with since a young age. She likes knowing the blankets she makes are changing lives.
“My love is going to this blanket and it’s like going to someone else to help them out in their life,” 5th Grader, Kynleigh Berry said.
The project is in its 19th year. Since it started, 40,000 blankets have been distributed.
However this year, the need for blankets is extremely high.
“We have requests from the schools alone for 1600 blankets, and currently we’re sitting at about 442,” Vik said, “we’re really hoping that we get some additional funds to purchase fleece or donations of fleece or completed blankets. We accept all of those.”
All in an effort to help keep people warm amidst the cold winter air.
“Many of us, are very, very blessed. But not everybody knows how they can help somebody else. And so we can teach these students. It doesn’t take them very long to make a blanket. But the impact that that blankets going to have on the person who receives it is going to be long-lasting,” Vik said.
“So I want to push the most I can and for everyone else, I want them to really like push their love into the blanket so they know, like, even though ‘I don’t know you,’ I’m still caring. And I’m still thinking about you for a long time,” Berry said.
To help out with the Project Warm-Up, you can either show up to Saturday’s event, drop supplies off at Sonia Sotomayor Elementary School, or drop off new fleece tie blankets.
Click here for information on how to donate and the time of the event.
