Dearest Carole and Sewists,
I want to tell you how tremendously grateful Froebel School was yesterday to receive the extra-small chair bags and the totes for their teachers. The littlest kids (pre-K and Kindergartners) in that school now have chair bags, just like the rest of the classes received from your magical and prolific sewists. As a result, they no longer feel less worthy and less valued than the other kids in the school. Their books, pencils, and papers won't have to be strewn all over the floor any more. Disorder in belongings can sometimes engender disorder in behavior and in the classroom, which at times prevents students from learning. In a very real sense, you and your sewists have helped create an orderly environment in which the students have a better chance of learning, as well as a better chance of discovering the benefit of order, something that many of them do not learn at home. After delivering the things you and your sewists make, I often wonder how many people's lives will be changed in a multitude of ways, simply because of your generosity and your caring spirit. The smallest item, given with love, can affect a life in profound and lasting ways. Therefore, all of you should take pride in the work you do for so many. The work of your hands might actually be helping to shape lives and destinies. I know that it has changed lives and given a sense of hope to many, especially for immigrants and refugees, who have utterly nothing. They suddenly realize that they are welcome in the land they have chosen to be their new home, just as my mother and grandparents did in 1927. (I send to you a very special "thank you" for allowing me to serve those immigrant communities with your dedicated work. I wish that such groups had been in existence at the time my mother and grandparents emigrated from Germany. Their lives would have been made so much easier, and their struggles could have been alleviated.)
Froebel School will give the totes you made for their teachers on Teacher Appreciation Day. I want you to know that the school's Activities Director was extremely grateful that you could fill her request for those bags. The teachers there have nothing in which to carry their teacher's manuals, other books, and papers back and forth between home and school. Those teachers are going to be very surprised to receive your beautiful tote bags. That St. Louis school receives so very little, and the teachers do not have the resources they need in order to educate the children properly or even to execute their own duties effectively. They regularly pay for school supplies and other classroom needs out of their own money. Their own money can be stretched only so far, and the last thing on their mind is buying anything for themselves, like a tote bag. The tote bags which you made will at least allow them to carry their work, their students' work, and their books in a manageable receptacle. You will be making their job easier, and I know that they will appreciate it when they receive those bags.
As terribly poor as Froebel School is, Walbridge School is even worse. It is hard to paint a picture of that school or that neighborhood because it is so economically depressed. The school is an old but stately building in far North St. Louis City, situated amid an area that somewhat resembles a war zone. It is much like the area in which Froebel exists, but it is in even deeper poverty, surrounded by boarded-up buildings, homes without windows, doors, and sometimes without roofs and walls. (And, yes, people are actually living in those buildings.) I saw no grocery stores anywhere, only one check-cashing store after another, empty lots with high grass and dirty brush, and blocks and blocks of vacant, completely uninhabitable buildings. The area looks as if it has been "picked clean" of anything of value. Even a street sign off of North Kingshighway had been stolen. The neighborhood is very dangerous, and I will admit to a lot of trepidation as I drove through it - and I especially when I had to get out of my car to seek directions because street signs I needed to guide me to the school had been stolen. You can imagine the extent of need in that school, in that entire area. You made 250 chair bags for Walbridge, enough for all of the children in that school. The Principal was utterly ecstatic to receive them and the calculators, which you also provided. I want you to know that the tote bags, the wool scarves, and the pencil bags, which you are also making for that school, are going to provide much-needed items for a deeply, deeply distressed school and for lives at a level of poverty that is almost impossible to imagine. I honestly cannot conceptualize the lives of the children - or any others - who live there. Nor can I comprehend how the school staff can accomplish much of anything there. They have so little to work with. THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART for the things you have already made and the things that you are still making for that school. I do believe that what you do for others in this life carries blessings, not only to the receivers, but also to the givers. All of you deserve showers of blessings just for what you have provided to Froebel and Walbridge Schools, alone.
May you all enjoy the most wonderful week for your generosity and loving kindness. I am tremendously proud and honored to be affiliated with angels of mercy like you.
Janice