SAGINAW, MI - As mid-Michigan medical providers begin accepting supply donations and volunteers step up to fill the need, a grassroots group is seeking to unite the Great Lakes Bay Region’s “home sewists” to get their homemade masks to those who need them.

Tami Davis, a Saginaw mother, posted recently to the Saginaw News/Neighborhood Watch Facebook group to ask if Covenant HealthCare needed masks. A group chat soon followed, then a new Facebook group called 4M: Mid-Michigan Mask Makers, which now operates a makeshift supply chain of homemade masks.

The group’s goal is to get masks to organizations needing them during the COVID-19 outbreak and to make sure volunteers have the time and materials to make them. The group has about 150 members and even more people making masks overall as of Wednesday, Davis said.

“We really only organized ourselves effectively on Thursday night, Friday morning,” Davis said. “This is what we’ve done in a weekend.”

Having a defined structure has so far helped the group best use its resources while limiting social contact between those who contribute. Davis does most of the driving, picking up completed masks from volunteers, delivering materials to those making them, and delivering donations to places that need them. There are a series of designated “drop off” points in Saginaw and Midland, where exchanges take place.

“We don’t want somebody with five masks to run up to Covenant and say, ‘Here you go,’” Davis said. “It’s truly a community effort."

The group has already created hundreds of masks to donate to local healthcare providers, Davis said. She delivered 200 masks to Hoyt Nursing and Rehab Center Wednesday afternoon, allowing the facility to conserve medical supplies for its roughly 200 employees, said executive director Shawn Coughlin.

“We just didn’t want to give away our own surgical masks that we have in storage, because we’re holding off until we need them," Coughlin said. "It’s inevitable, Covenant’s gonna call, St. Mary’s will call eventually with somebody that has the disease and we’re gonna have to use our other protective equipment for those people.”

The rehab center also donated some raw materials back to Davis during the drop off.

“We’ll give whatever we can to help people like this,” Coughlin said.

Karen Taylor, who runs a daycare service in Saginaw, has been working with the group for about a week, she said. The work has been a huge collaborative effort: Her neighbors cut material for her, and even her daughters are pitching in, she said.

“I just want to make a difference,” Taylor said. “I can’t go to the hospital and volunteer, so this is what I’m doing. Makes me feel like Rosie the Riveter.”

The group is not an official company or organization, and thus can’t take donations like a nonprofit. It has created a GoFundMe page to help cover costs of materials and transportation.

“People are really just dusting off their machines and digging into their (material) stashes,” Davis said. “I say all the time, anybody who sews has always secretly known that one day their stash would save the world. And today is that day.”

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