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Local and National Humanitarian Initiatives

 

The Doukhobor Cultural Interpreteive Society ... a proud supporter of our local community

 

Bags of Love 


The Cultural Interpretive Society has recently formed a partnership with volunteers from the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Trail in a project called Bags of Love.

 

The program is dedicated to making the lives of displaced children in our communities brighter when it becomes necessary to remove them from their residence. Often these children cannot take personal items from their home. A Bag of Love is a handmade duffel bag filled with items that are age and gender appropriate (handmade quilts, toys, stuffed animals and personal care items). The contents of this bag fulfill the child's immediate needs while in transition and are often the only possessions the child can call "my very own".

 

The CIS has donated fabrics towards this project and is now a collection centre for suitable items to fill the handmade duffel bags. Our volunteers have also become involved with the sewing of bags and the quilts to go in them. As needed, the Bags of Love are distributed by the Trail Seventh Day Adventist Church to children, in the West Kootenays, who are in transition to a more secure living environment.

 

To learn more about the Bags of Love program, visit www.IMVO.org

 

 



Chevron Quilt donated to West Kootenay Friends of Refugees 


The CIS Sizzling Sewers created a chevron design from small pieces of colorful fabric and incorporated it into a beautiful quilt. Timmy-Jean Tack, a local resident who quilts on a longarm quilting machine, donated her skills to this humanitarian project. The quilt was donated to the West Kootenay Friends of Refugees (WKFR) in Rossland, B.C. as a raffle prize to raise money to sponsor two refugee families from Burma (Myanmar) who are currently living in a refugee camp in Malaysia.

For more information on the MKFR visit their website: http://www.friendsofrefugees.ca

 

 

 




Easter Seal House, Vancouver, British Columbia

 

A Cultural Interpretive Society Charitable Donation

By Lola Sherstobitoff

 

Easter Seal House  in Vancouver is a welcoming home away from home where out-of-town families stay while their children undergo medical treatment in Vancouver. Easter Seal House is not subsidized by the government and relies on many charitable events and public donations.


It was my privilege to fill our small car with the hand made quilts and afghans lovingly sewn by Pauline Weinhert, Polly Podmorow, Anne Gretchen, Viola Hallock, Irene Mallow, Laverna D'Andrea and others and deliver them to Easter Seal House where they were gratefully received by the Manager. Many quilts were delivered previously by Polly Podmorow and many more will be donated in the future,


I had the privilege of meeting a young boy of 12 and his mom at Easter Seal House, and when I offered him a choice of quilts, his smile filled the room. It was so heartwarming to have this first hand experience seeing where our charity quilts go. This young boy and his mom were on their way home that day, and as he turned around, wrapped in his new blanket, he asked me to thank the ladies for this wonderful quilt.

 

 

      Photos - Welcome Bear at the Easter Seal House

      Easter Seal Staff accepting CIS blanket donation.

 

 

 


 

 

People Loving People,  Trail, British Columbia

 

Over the past eight years, People Loving People, a charity organization in Trail, accepted many quilts and pillows from the USCC Cultural Interpretive Society.   The Mennonite Central Committee in Abbotsford, the Global Emergency Mission Society in Langley and the Alberta Disaster Relief Association in Edmonton are the recipients of our contributions.  They in turn send the quilts and pillows on to the lower mainland as well as Mali, Romania, Moldovia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Guatemala, Philippines, India, Mexico, Central America, and Peru and other countries as the need arises.

 

 

 

 

People Loving People - Quilts for Haiti Project

 

April 12, 2010. Eileen Kooznetsoff (L) and Polly Podmorrow
CIS members, delivered 8 bags of hand made quilts which were transported to MCC Kelowna by
PLP quilter Sandra Edwards and her husband Wayne. These quilts found their way to Mennonite Central
in the Lower Mainland where they became part of the 10,000 Quilts for Haiti project.


 

 

Colombian Refugee Committee


In 2002-2003, three CIS members were USCC representatives on the Nelson Refugee Committee.

 
A refugee family from Colombia, South America was brought to the Kootenay area through the initiative of the Refugee Committee.  The CIS assisted in collecting furnishings, bedding, dishes and some clothing to help the young mother and her two children begin their new life in Canada.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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