Sault volunteer group will offer up to 2,000 free masks to public at local grocery stores

“I’m absolutely in awe of the people of Sault Ste. Marie who volunteered to do this.”

That from Gabi Doleske, Days for Girls Face Masks co-lead, speaking to SooToday after she and co-leads Holly Wickett and Karen Marrocco spearheaded a local campaign in which the team received significant donations of money to buy material for the sewing and distribution of thousands of free masks for people during the battle against COVID-19.

“In 10 weeks we have made 14,245 masks and scrub caps,” Doleske said.

Most of the masks have been donated to many local and regional organizations, including Sault Area Hospital (SAH), ARCH, F.J. Davey Home, Sault Community Career Centre, Batchewana First Nation Health Centre, Matthews Memorial Hospital and the North Channel Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic.

Masks were also given to hospitals in other communities, such as Marathon and Orillia.

Doleske, a Sault College language and communication professor, said “in March, when we got sent home from work and COVID sprang up, I thought we should start making masks, so I started making masks and more people got interested as we were talking about it.”

283 volunteers stepped up to help the Days for Girls Face Masks cause.

“It just grew (as word got around),” Doleske said.

“Half of them sewed, the rest collected materials. We had a lot of prep work. They were primarily women, but we had quite a few couples working together. It’s been a really interesting phenomenon to watch because I don’t know most of these people, I’ve never met them. All these people would be emailing that they wanted to do this, so we sent them patterns, mentored them to teach them the patterns. We had drivers, pickups and collections,” said Doleske of the well-organized mask-making operation.

Doleske was previously known for her ongoing work with Days for Girls, a group dedicated to advancing the status of women, the group having already made feminine hygiene products for women in developing countries. 

“That gave us credibility in the community. That really, really helped.”

“Trying to get supplies in the beginning was really difficult because they closed Fabricland. That was really hard, but Life's A Stitch helped us and a lot of people donated. They cleaned out their closets. We had material from the 1970s,” Doleske chuckled.

Zonta donated $1,000, which went toward purchase of material from Life’s A Stitch.

The group also received $1,000 each (for the purchase of material) from Kiwanis Club of Lakeshore, Rotary Club of Sault Ste. Marie and Club Calabrese.

“People would also just give us money, twenty dollars here and ten dollars there,” Doleske said.

The well-trusted group had received $5,745 (an extra $1,745 from individual donations) as of this weekend, most of that money now used for material to make masks.

“It was really hard to get elastic. There’s a world shortage of elastic. I put in a couple of orders online in April and they’re just starting to come in now, so people cleared out their elastic as well,” Doleske said.

Eventually, Fabricland opened for curbside service, Doleske purchasing $3,000 worth of material from the shop (from the donated money).

“It all had to be washed, it went out to the cutters and the people who sewed.” 

There are two mask patterns with five variations, available in six sizes, Doleske said.

“Volunteers were encouraged to make masks for themselves and their families and whenever they heard that a group, institution or business needed masks, they were to let us know so we could get the masks to them faster.”

“I think we should take (a part of) bragging rights, but there’s another group called Million Mask Challenge SSM and they’ve made about 14,000 masks as well. They started two weeks before us and they started through Facebook. We captured the email crowd, a lot of older people who don’t have Facebook,” Doleske said.

“Our policy was, and is, ‘we are all in this together.’ That's why we did this."

The success of Days for Girls Face Masks captured the attention of Steve Butland, former Sault city councillor, mayor, and MP.

Butland, Doleske and team driver Linda Mizzi will be distributing free masks to members of the public who want them at stands outside five Sault grocery stores Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

“We’ll be saying ‘if you want one, you can have one,’ even for free, but we’ll be putting out a donation jar because we do think there’s still going to be a second wave of COVID-19 and we still need lots more elastic and nose pieces,” Doleske said.

“This is pretty exciting that we got five stores to agree to have us in their parking lots and give out masks (Butland having approached management at the grocery stores for permission to set up).”

Days for Girls Face Masks will have up to 2,000 masks to give away at grocery stores.

Volunteers have informed Doleske they’re willing to keep sewing masks over the summer.

Masks will be available to the public Monday outside Food Basics at 701 Pine St. from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., then at Food Basics at 625 Trunk Rd. beginning at 2:30 p.m.

They will be available at Pino's Get Fresh at 219 Trunk Rd. at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, then Wednesday beginning at 8 a.m. at Joe's No Frills at 519 Korah Rd., followed by Rome's Your Independent Grocer at Cambrian Mall at 2:30 p.m.