DENVER – A couple from Colorado has traveled to Arizona to deliver 500 homemade face masks to the Navajo Nation intended to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
A group of volunteer sewers, all from the Denver area, originally started making masks for front-line workers but have since delivered to about 100 different organizations, KCNC-TV reported.
The Denver Mask Task Force organized in March and has since “grown to over 1,500 volunteers on our Facebook page. We’ve donated over 11,000 masks,” co-group organizer Amanda Glenn said.
Task force volunteer Lloyd Chavez recently suggested the group make masks for the Navajo Nation, which spans three states.
“There’s not a lot resources that make it to reservations around the country,” Chavez said. “They’re kind of put on the back burner.”
The Navajo Nation would have one of the highest per capita rates of coronavirus in the country if it was a state. Tribal leaders have imposed strict curfews and preventive measures.
Chavez and his wife, Cindy, drove nine hours to Chinle, Arizona, to drop of the package. They arrived Wednesday.
“I’m just so incredibly inspired by the generosity of so many strangers. It’s been this incredibly magic experience where everything we ask for just shows up,” Glenn said.
Glenn told KCNC-TV that the delivery to the Navajo Nation is just the first of several donations of its kind and the “stitch ninjas” are working on filling mask orders for tribes in other states.
