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Charity work is in the bag

Church volunteers make sleeping mats from plastic

The discarded plastic grocery bag – long maligned for its ubiquitousness, unsightliness and uselessness – may be vindicated.

Cindy Scholfield and 25 to 30 other volunteers from the First United Methodist Church in Durango have joined a labor of love involving spent plastic bags – a project that has swept the country.

Six-hundred grocery bags can be turned into a 6-foot by 3-foot, lightweight, easily cleanable sleeping mat for homeless people, the production of which requires nothing more high-tech than a pair of scissors and a crochet hook.

A lesser number of bags can be recycled into a sturdy, attractive tote bag.

Scholfield stumbled onto the phenomenon while searching the Web for something else. There, she found numerous sites that graphically explain how to turn plastic bags into sleeping mats. It has become a popular project with church groups, she said.

The idea is only a few years old, Scholfield said. But no one has a solid answer to the question of how someone ever came up with the idea, she said.

Plastic mats are more practical than blankets, Scholfield said. When a blanket or sleeping bag gets wet or dirty, homeless people tend to throw them away, she said. On the other hand, plastic mats last forever and can be washed and dried easily.

Scholfield soon learned that Manna Soup Kitchen and two homeless shelters in Durango have any number of clients in need of a sleeping mat. She got the OK from Jake Forsythe, United Methodist’s director of missions, to teach mat manufacturing at the church.

“One of our goals is meeting needs,” Forsythe said.

The mat campaign is riding a tailwind, said Scholfield, who is scheduled to lead a mat-making workshop Tuesday at Fort Lewis College.

In preparation for a workshop, Scholfield sorts bags that members leave at the church, setting aside dirty bags, zip-lock bags, newspaper bags and bread bags.

The first step is to smooth the bag, place it flat on a firm surface, then fold it in half twice lengthwise. The handles are cut off, the seam end is severed, and the bag is cut into four equal sections.

Unfolding the sections produces loops, which are joined by reef knots into an endless length of plarn (plastic yarn). The plarn is crocheted into a mat or a tote bag.

The production of plarn is speeded by placing up to a dozen bags – one on top of another – to be cut. A skilled crocheter can add life to a creation by using bags of different colors.

At least two international missions by church members this year will include members who can teach mat-making. The goal is to enable residents of impoverished communities to produce a utilitarian article that can be sold.

Heretofore, the church’s international missions have focused on such projects as building libraries, drilling water wells and sponsoring medical clinics, Forsythe said.

One mission this summer is headed for Kenya, where the Durango church has established ties with activists and advocates for the poor.

In the isolated village of Obaga, not far from Lake Victoria, church members are working with a group of widows who want to improve their lot in life. The church has helped them buy land for a communal garden where they can grow their own food.

Sherry and McKenna Keil, mother and daughter, were participants in the mission to Obaga last year. McKenna is returning in June for three weeks.

“The country is beautiful, and the people are beautiful, so friendly and grateful for whatever they have,” McKenna Keil said as she folded bags at Scholfield’s training session last week.

Christie Ilg-Salter, a nurse practitioner, is making her third trip to Obaga. The visitors will hold a medical/vision/dental clinic, build two houses for widows with children and hold puberty talks for young girls, she said.

The new twist this year is mat-making.

“The mats are a great project,” Ilg-Salter said. “The people are very poor, with some sleeping on dirt or in mud. There are enough bags flying around to support mat production.”

daler@durangoherald.com

If you go

A workshop on making mats with plastic bags will be held from 3-5 p.m. Tuesday in the Senate Room of the Student Union at Fort Lewis College. For more information, call Cindy Scholfield at 799-0469.



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