A generous family from Arizona donated cute and child-friendly masks to Fresno EOC Head Start 0 to 5. Jennifer Soriano and her family were impressed with what the program does to help low-income families get access to education and wanted to give back.
“We greatly appreciate the masks that came to us from Arizona,” said the Head Start 0 to 5 Leadership Team. “Our children and their families are blessed to have masks that were specifically made to protect their health and safety. We are grateful to Jennifer and want to express our thanks to her for her care and concern for our clients here in Fresno.”
The Soriano family donated a few hundred masks in the Summer and recently donated about 1,700 more masks. “Since we have such small kids, we were able to use them to size the masks,” Soriano said. “We started with just a piece of cloth; then we realized maybe we needed a nose bridge, and then we thought about the ears.”
As the pandemic progressed, it became harder to find material, but the family said they made it a fun activity for all. They even calculated it takes 5 minutes and 43 seconds to complete each mask.
“Our 17-year-old did the cutting, our 12-year-old did the ironing, and the younger ones couldn’t do much, but they were encouraging us every step of the way,” Soriano said. “I didn’t even know how to use a sewing machine when we first started, but my husband even helped me with that. This was something we all wanted to do to help. Eventually, it became an assembly line.”
Head Start 0 to 5 is always in need of donations. If you would like to donate PPE to any of our Fresno EOC programs, please call (559) 263-1000.