December 7, 2012 -
PASCO, Wash. - While you may have thought about donating canned food, winter coats, or spare change this season, what about yarn?
A local non-profit group that has reached out to the community for the last 20 years needs your help keeping people warm.
Inside Community Action Connections in Pasco, you'll find Project Warm-Up.
It's a non profit group who knits, sews and crafts handmade items like hats, slippers, gloves scarves and more for the Columbia Basin. Volunteers take yarn from the office, and come back with what they create.
"We're trying to get what's needed to other non profit agencies," said Holli Calder-Cox, the director of Project Warm-Up, "We don't come in direct contact with their clients, we provide them the opportunity to bless their clients."
The gifts go to veterans, domestic violence victims, hospital patients and children.
"If you have a child that needs a blanket in your school, chances are everybody in that family needs a blanket," Calder-Cox said.
So far this year, volunteers have given out more than 8300 items, but they do more than keep people warm.
Every gift that project warm up gives out has two tags on it. One shows where the gift came from, and the other shows resources where people can get help for their other needs.
It's part of working with Community Action Connections, a non profit that provides social services to Benton and Franklin Counties.
"They are a natural partnership for CAC," said Cathy Merrill Holle, the director of Home Base Community at CAC, "we are getting information directly to the people who need this services, and it immediately gives us an opportunity to find out how else we can help them."
CAC helps where it can, but Project Warm-Up relies on donations. This year volunteers have worked more than 26,000 hours.
"Even at minimum wag, that's over $2 million of services that went into our community that nobody pays for. It's all free." said Calder-Cox.
And they don't plan to stop.
Calder-Cox told us, "we need fleece, flannel, batting for blankets, we need yarn, we use a specialty yarn called 'Simply Soft' for our burn patients and cancer patients, but it's very expensive."
So if you want to help people stay warm this season, Project Warm-Up is your answer.
Whether you give supplies or a make tax deductible donation, helping others will warm your heart.
Project Warm-Up is located on the first floor of the Community Action Connections building in Pasco, at 720 West Court Street.
