Monday, November 3, 2008
Melanie Gorges still keeps a plaid fleece pillow she created in seventh grade, even though the ties are fraying and the fleece has become fuzzy.
The pillow is a reminder of how Gorges, Andale freshman, began making and donating pillows to children in the pediatrics wards of hospitals. The project has been so successful it might soon expand to a Kansas City, Kan., middle school.
Melanie Gorges, Andale freshman, donated self-made pillows to the Lawrence Memorial Hospital's pediatrics department to use with child patients. Gorges and members of the Douthart Scholarship Hall made the pillows from travel pillows and fleece.
The project began as a craft for Gorges’ birthday party in the seventh grade. Gorges and her mother saw the idea for fleece pillows in a magazine and decided to let each of the girls at the party create one.
After the party, Gorges’ mother contacted the Via Christi Regional Medical Center in Wichita and spoke with Angie Long, certified child specialist at the center, about donating pillows to children in the pediatrics ward.
Long said the pillows were a comfort item for children who entered the hospital without bringing pillows of their own.
“It’s nice to be able to give them something they can use and also take home,” Long said.
Gorges donated batches of pillows, usually about 10 each time, to the hospital a few times a year until she graduated from high school. Between donations, she saved her money and began work on the next batch.
To make the pillows, Gorges ties fleece onto pre-made pillow-stuffing forms and uses fabric patterns such as flowers or racecars for the front and solid colors for the back.
The pillows cost about $7 to create — $3 for the forms and $2 to $5 for the fabric.
Gorges paid for the pillows with her own money after developing a savings plan based on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey show. She saved 50 percent of her income for college, spent 40 percent and donated 10 percent to charity.
When Gorges arrived at the University, she contacted Lawrence Memorial Hospital to see whether its pediatrics ward would be interested in her pillows.
Denise Martinek, director of Maternal Child Services at the hospital, worked with Gorges. Martinek said the pillows reminded the children of home and helped ease parents’ minds.
“Anything we can do to make their child more comfortable is a blessing to the parents,” Martinek said.
Because Gorges didn’t have a job in Lawrence to pay for the pillows, she contacted the women who lived with her in Douthart Scholarship Hall for donations and help in making the pillows.
In the end, the hall paid for most of the pillow forms and fabric. Liz Gustin, Overland Park freshman, volunteered to help with the pillows and said the women sang along to a “Now That’s What I Call Music” CD from the 1990s and jumped in a pile of the pillows at the end of the night.
Gorges is working on a plan to donate pillows to all of the children at Eisenhower Middle School in Kansas City, Kan. Gorges said she began wanting to work with the school after a speaker visited her introductory teaching class and talked about the problems the middle school’s students were facing. She said 75 percent of the students received free or reduced-fee lunches and some were homeless.
Gorges said she hoped to raise money for the project by working with other scholarship halls and organizations on campus. If the project doesn’t work out, Gorges said, she would like to work with nursing homes in the future.
— —Edited by Adam Mowder
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Comments
Cushioning the hardship of a hospital stay
i make a lot of fun hand crafted pillows myself and have been wanting to make a donation of them to a children's hospital. do you have any advice on hospitals that take such donations that i could send them too? thanks!
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