The Mask Makers!

Masks are one of the simplest protections from Covid-19, but when the pandemic first hit not many of us had time to make them as our work and life situations changed so quickly and drastically.  Enter Jacky Ainsworth, member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, and three of her neighbours to the rescue.

“One of my neighbours who is a quilter had quite a supply of good quality material so she started making masks for neighbours. Then one of the members of our church who was a doctor at Noosa Hospital put word around to ask if anybody could make masks for the hospital because they couldn’t get them, so that’s when I became involved,” says Jacky.

Word of mouth about the masks caught at on Good Shepherd and the wider community.  All of a sudden it just snowballed.

“We ended up distributing 1500 all together,” says Jacky.  “We weren’t charging for them, we were donating them: there were some taxi drivers, there was Meals on Wheels, there were hospitals, there were doctors, there were vet surgeries, a physiotherapist.  There was a fruit shop that took a whole lot for their staff members.”

They even sent masks nationally to Adelaide and Melbourne, as well as overseas to New Guinea.

For Jacky, making the masks just felt like the right thing to do.

“It was just the fact that it was something for the community, something that was really needed,” says Jacky.  “It was something I was meant to do.  And certainly as I live on my own I was able to give up plenty of my free time to be able to do that.  It was just a Christian sort of thing to do.”