Cadence Loiselle-Shire: Reusable masks for her community

Cadence Loiselle-Shire makes reusable cloth masks for her community

What was your project about?

We work primary with three organization (1justcity, Siloam Mission and Agape Table) making reusable cloth masks. The impact of the project was to provide protection to individuals in need during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The masks were also able to be used by staff at organizations to allow them to continue to provide services.

How did you recruit and involved your peers in the project?

I was the only main person working one this project the only other help I had was from my mother Cassandra Loiselle-Walker. My mom also used her FaceBook and Instagram to make people aware that I was sewing masks with my mom and that for every mask my mom donated she was also donating a mask for my project. a. Because of COVID there was no one event. I egnaged people through my social media platform and the non-profit organizations. During the final push to complete the masks for my project, I did recruit my grandmother to help with the pinning and pressing, allowing me to work with the three generations of women in my family, even using my great-mothers sewing machine from the 1970s to help complete the project.

Who did your project engage and what impacts did you and your team achieve?

The target audience we had was low income people get access to reusable masks. We did what we set out to achieve we donate/worked with non-profit organization to help low income people have excuse to reusable masks that we made.

What was your biggest success achieved through your project?

Knowing that I had the will power to make 180 masks and putting that in to prospective each mask can take up to 30-45 minutes per mask also, learning how to film videos and edit them.This will help me in future endeavours, including maybe looking at a bigger project through Passion to Purpose with my Cadet corps.

What lessons learned through your project.? If you were to start your project today, would you do anything differently?

If I were to start my project today, I would put more emphasis on marketing. Due to the sudden switch to a remote competition, most of the marketing for the original event could no longer be used. With the change of plans and environment, we had limited time to do a wide variety of tasks. While it was difficult to attract a large number of participants in a small amount of time, our marketing team did a fantastic job of attracting a fair number of participants in the end. Through this event, I learned the importance of having a good communication system where the roles of members could be clearly defined. With better communication, not only would the sudden transition from in-person to remote work be much smoother and more efficient, but it would also make marketing the event much easier.

What did you learn as you planned your project? Were there any changes you did not plan for? How did you adapt to these changes?

As I planned my project, I further developed my communication and organizational skills. I needed to coordinate with both my peers – many of whom I had not known beforehand – and other groups such as the staff at the heal care facility. One of the changes that I did not plan for was the busy schedule of hospitals. The initial hospital I contacted was not available on the set date, so I had to adapt to this situation by contacting other care centres and hospitals.

Cadence Loiselle-Shire, Award Participant and Passion to Purpose Grantee