Coronavirus in Columbus: Immigrant women sewing masks and surgical caps for friends, people on front lines
When sewing classes stopped at Riverview International Center, volunteers shifted gears to start sewing masks and other products for front-line workers and businesses.
In their tiny apartments near Riverview Drive on the city’s North Side, Tania Akther and Fozia Fnu sew.
They clear out space on the floor to cut fabric. They sew in their living rooms and on fold-out tables in their bedrooms. They work with their children, all home from school and day care, playing at their feet.
The women immigrated to the United States with their families five years ago: Akther from Bangladesh and Fnu from Afghanistan.
They carry their finished products to the Riverview International Center — a nonprofit group that helps immigrants in the neighborhood learn how to live in America — down the front steps and into a small teal room that’s usually reserved for English classes. There, Akther and Fnu are met by Linda Root, a volunteer at the community center who teaches sewing classes.
Together, the women organize fabric donated to the center and cut out patterns.They sewed dresses, aprons and bags before this pandemic. But now they’ve pivoted to masks, surgical caps and medical shoe covers.Root started teaching classes at the center a few years ago to help the new Americans create revenue streams for themselves through sewing.
But since Ohio’s stay-at-home order went into place, classes have been canceled. Moment by Moment Life has been upended by the coronavirus, but people from all corners of our community are helping one another move forward. In this occasional series, we will share how some are enduring and even thriving. Read more at dispatch.com/momentbymoment. However, that didn’t stop them from sewing.
Akther and Fnu started noticing their friends and neighbors didn’t have any masks. And since both were out of work because of the pandemic, the two started making masks.At first, the masks were just for friends. Then they started sewing masks to donate to front-line workers at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital just down the street and the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s COVID-19 unit.Pretty soon, other orders started coming in.Ohio State asked them to sew surgical caps.
A Columbus hair salon reached out and to see if they could sew some masks for customers when they reopen. When Root talked with her neighbor who is a dentist, he mentioned how his staff didn’t have enough personal protective gear to go back to work. So the dentist asked if they could sew some shoe coverings.
Akther, Fnu and another sewing class member have sewed more than 200 products the last few weeks. With most of their materials having been donated, any profit from paid orders goes to the group.
Root said that was the goal of the sewing classes to begin with, and she hopes the group can expand into other products people might need as businesses reopen.“I think masks are going to be part of the way life is for a while,” Root said.
