Chapter Spotlight: Johnson High School Fleece Blanket Making

This project was dedicated towards the word “service”, where it allows people to take their time to do something for those in need of support. The project was done in two parts: the first was collecting fleece materials to make fleece blankets for the residents at Good News at Noon, and the second project (still on-going until February 7, 2025) involved students donating needed and suggested supplies for the residents at Good News at Noon. The aim was to provide a hands-on service opportunity for students to spend time together to make something for a group of individuals, and making blankets seemed like an enjoyable activity that would help those that needed blankets. Therefore, the blankets would be sent to the residents at Good News at Noon in case they do not have enough blankets for the winter season. This service project originally consisted of only HOSA members, but it was expanded to include as many other clubs and organizations at Johnson High School. That way, there would have been more involvement than if only HOSA was invited to attend. On January 25, 2025, the following clubs had members attend the fleece blanket making activity: HOSA, Latino Knights of Service, National Honors Society, and Beta Club. At least thirty people had attended the fleece blanket making activity - nine of whom said in the attendance sheet that they were not doing this for a club. Some of the people who attended already had experience making fleece blankets, who also helped teach other attendees how to make them. For a few other attendees, a video (under a minute) was demonstrated to show the step process for making fleece blankets - it involved laying two fleece materials on top of each other, cutting the corners of the blankets, cutting at least an inch on the sides, then tying them together to make one neat blanket - or gave them a brief summary of what to do when making the blankets. The majority of them worked in groups, which helped speed up the process. One issue that we ran into was that we did not have enough scissors for all of them, but thankfully a teacher had donated some fleece materials that were pre-cut and only required tying together to create one big blanket. Although we had a big group working on this, they finished after the activity formally ended - one of the advisors had to stay to monitor them until they finished. In the end, around ten fleece blankets were made, with two others being mostly done. Outside of the blanket-making activity, a club named Sources of Strength had donated $100 to allow us to buy fleece materials for the activity. Trying to spread the word took a lot of effort, but we were able to make flyers and post about it on our instagram page (and some of the other clubs that also helped out). So overall, this project came out a lot better than anticipated, and students enjoyed working together to make the blankets.