“I’m like, ‘I can’t lead my kid and other generations into (a climate-challenged future),'” she said.
The store is now closed, but her efforts continue to help support sustainable business practices. Since the COVID-19 outbreak and government-mandated shutdown, she’s enlisted her network of peers, volunteers, and donors to help with the massive effort to sew and create re-usable masks for healthcare workers who need them.
“This is happening out of our sewing rooms, out of our closets. People are using 100% woven cotton sheets, pillowcases, things like that,” she said. “We don’t need to make a purchase to have an impact.”
The call came out recently from Allina Health for mask donations, and North Memorial Health recently put out instructions for how to make them. Kearns said her volunteers, which include members of Anoka County’s Mobile Menders, are able to make protective equipment healthcare workers ask for.
Her other main goal is to streamline the creation, collection, and distribution of the homemade gear, so that volunteers who don’t have certain items or don’t want to drive around to collect them can instead focus on what they are able to and feel most comfortable doing.
“Our goal was to create like this community network so that we don’t have somebody in Blaine driving down to Apple Valley,” said Kearns.
