A New Year, A New Project

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For me, a new year brings with it New Direction, New Goals, New Hope.
Never has that been more true here at Margaret's Hope Chest than now.
We have a unique opportunity this year to serve a population that I believe is UNDERSERVED here in the United States--children of prisoners. The statistics are staggering....RIGHT NOW there are 1.7 million U.S. children with a parent in prison. Here is a link to more sobering stats.
Many of you are aware of The Angel Tree ministry. These people understand that having a parent (or two) in prison puts a terrible amount of stress on the family unit-financially, mentally, and physically.
MHC started wondering about birthdays....is anyone out there making sure that these children are getting a birthday present from their incarcerated parent. We started thinking of all of the wonderful volunteer quilters who came out of the woodwork this fall and helped us collect over 400 beautiful unique quilts. We started wondering if those quilters would help us again and if new volunteers might be found.
Turns out that the answer to my first wondering is.....sort-of. There are very few groups (that I could find) out there who are helping these families with birthday gifts.
So, as we suspected, there is a great need. And how did we respond? By creating WRAPPED IN HOPE-a birthday quilt-giving program for children of incarcerated people.
RIGHT NOW-we are looking for volunteer quilters who will choose one child and make a unique quilt (based on information provided by the parent) for his/her birthday.
Will you help us? Right now, I have list of 15 precious children from Texas, Virginia, California and Michigan who could benefit from being Wrapped in Hope. Leave a comment or e-mail Carin if you are ready to join!