A few bolts of fabric, some scissors and the kindness of young people will help keep local cancer patients a little bit warmer this winter.
More than 20 middle school students from St. James Roman Catholic Church in Pennington recently gathered together to make fleece blankets that will be donated to cancer patients at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey Hamilton, the cancer center at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton.
Now in its second year, the project is part of the community service that each student must complete prior to receiving the sacrament of confirmation, said Nancy Lucash, director of religious education at St. James.
The students made 25 blankets during the three-hour session which they will then donate to patients this winter.
“We prayed for all of the patients who would receive blankets before we started,” Lucash said. “Basically saying we are thankful for our own health and we pray for healing and hope for the people who would receive those blankets.”
Lucash hopes to continue expanding this project to hold blanket-making sessions in both the spring and fall to accommodate all of the students who want to participate.
“The students genuinely enjoyed doing it,” Lucash said. “We tried to make it a fun activity but also remind them that this is a service. We are offering of our time so that others may have a better quality of life, even in a very small sense.”
