KILAUEA — Time was running out. Kilauea School students bustled and hustled amidst a sea of cords that snaked between desks, bodies jammed into every available space in the portable classroom. “This is our third day, and hopefully, the last,”
KILAUEA — Time was running out.
Kilauea School students bustled and hustled amidst a sea of cords that snaked between desks, bodies jammed into every available space in the portable classroom.
“This is our third day, and hopefully, the last,” said Judy Waite, the sixth grade teacher. “We started sewing two days ago and it’s been hectic.”
Waite said the project of sewing quilts for the Aurora Project was spearheaded by volunteers Kathie Sindn and Jeanette Robertson who coordinated the sewing machines that became focal points of the cramped classroom.
Additionally, the pair of volunteers coordinated to have a group of home school teens drop in to help the students learn how to work with fabric and the sewing machines.
“This is basically a learning project,” Waite said. “The students learn to sew, but more importantly, it’s also a service learning project.”
Waite said the service learning aspect of the project weighed heavily on the students when they discovered they were making quilts for kids who were literally burned out of their villages.
“The group who will bring the quilts leave for Thailand at the end of the month, so we need to be done by then,” the teacher said. “The kids and families who will be getting the quilts have nothing. They were burned out of their villages in Burma, escaped to Thailand, and are now living in the jungles with nothing. The youngsters need blankets to sleep with.”
In addition to the quilts and blankets, Waite said the group will also be bringing up school supplies and other items for the displaced families.
She added that a community fund-raiser is also scheduled prior to the group’s departure. That event, scheduled for Nov. 24 at The Church of the Pacific, is projected to generate funds to help purchase the needed school supplies and clothing items.
Amidst the activity, Cyndee Fehring, the head of the group taking the supplies overseas, dropped in and quietly watched the students’ frenzied pace of piecing together quilt squares, ironing, pinning and sewing the squares together.
In an earlier e-mail, Fehring said there are other school groups outside of Kaua‘i collecting and making blankets and quilts for the Aurora foundation. These school groups come from New York, California and Washington.
“The students are very enthused about the project,” Waite said, admitting that this was the first time she undertook a task of this magnitude.
“This is the first time I ever took on anything like this, and I wasn’t too sure about how it would work,” she said. “But it turned out great.”
