Project Linus: Moncton group marks 15 years of handing out blankets to thousands of children

All about Project Linus Crystal Garrett gets the details on a community group that creates blankets for children going through challenging times.

For 15 years, those who volunteer for the Greater Moncton chapter of Project Linus have been making blankets for children who need comfort at challenging time in their lives.

More than 16,000 blankets have been made since late 2009 by ‘blanketeers’ – a group of retired women between the ages of 60 of 92.

Among them is group co-ordinator Gisèle Julien. The retired educator got involved in the group thanks to a former principal.

“She asked some of us if we would be interested in starting a Project Linus, so a bunch of us decided to do that and 15 years later here I am, a Project Linus member,” Julien said.

Julien’s Dieppe, N.B., home is known to members as “blanket central.”

“When we receive our blankets we put them all in the same place, so it’s at my place, and then when we do a delivery, we have to sort the blankets, that takes a couple of hours,” she said.

“Then we do our deliveries, so in between getting the blankets and delivery we need to have the blankets somewhere, so I’m blanket central.”

Several local organizations receive the blankets, including Ronald McDonald House, the Jean Irving Centre, and the Beauséjour Family Crisis Centre.

“All the blankets go to different places, but the majority will be both the Moncton Hospital and the Georges Dumont Hospital,” Julien said.

In addition to the handmade blankets, the women also pass out knitted dolls made by an 83-year-old.

“She makes a whole bunch of them and she calls them her babies … the faces are different but they all have hearts on them,” said Julien.

“We make sure that all our blankets that go to the hospitals have some of these because a lot of nurses in the hospital will give them to the children when they’re going for a test or they’re going for bloodwork or whatever reason they feel should have a little help to get them through whatever they’re going through.”

One family among the many who have received a blanket from Project Linus sticks out in particular to Julien.

“A few years back we had an accident here where a boy fell off the church and he died and he had a twin sister, he had another sister and he had this friend that was with him when he died, so we got blankets for all those people, because once we hear of a tragedy or of a need for a blanket the whole family gets a blanket,” she said.

“Then a couple weeks later the older sister called me and she said, ‘Gisele you don’t realize how much those blankets helped us through this.’ I’m getting shivers just talking about that.”

While many Project Linus members use their own materials, they also rely on donations.

“Sometimes a grandmother might say she’s going to move to a nursing home or whatever and she’s got a lot of yarn and they’ll call us and say, ‘Do you want some more yarn, can you use more yarn?’ We always say yes and then we distribute it to our members so that they have something to work on,” Julien said.

“Now, not all our blankets are using yarn because some of them are sewn as well, so we have one of our blanketeers who does the sewing for us and all the others are usually doing either crocheting or knitting.”

Julien said the group is “always” looking for new blanketeers. Moncton Project Linus meets twice a month, with dates posted to their Facebook page.

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