The Giving Back Project 2020

GIVING BACK WITH ALOHA

When our community needed help, Sky Dreams put travel accessories aside and started sewing.

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began changing everyday life, sewing communities across the country stepped forward to make cloth face masks for healthcare professionals and first responders.

With so many sewists already supporting those efforts, I decided Sky Dreams could help in another way—by focusing on essential workers, individuals with weakened immune systems and our Kupuna (elderly) in Hawai‘i.

On March 22, 2020, I temporarily shifted production in my business and began using my own collection of fabric and sewing supplies to make face masks. I shared a simple post on Facebook offering free face masks, asking recipients only to cover shipping.

I never imagined what would happen next.

Within three days, I received more than 1,000 requests.

After the project was featured by KHON2 News and shared through online community resources, requests continued to arrive from near and far.

A COMMUNITY CAME TOGETHER

What began at my sewing machine quickly became something much bigger than me.

Family, friends and members of the community volunteered their time to help cut fabric, sew masks, prepare orders and package requests. Others donated fabric and supplies so we could continue making masks for those who needed them.

When people offered monetary donations, I encouraged them instead to support their churches, food banks and other organizations serving their communities during the pandemic.

I have always been a small, one-woman business, so there was no way I could have fulfilled the growing number of requests without the incredible people who stepped forward to help.

2,700 MASKS. COUNTLESS ACTS OF ALOHA.

The final Giving Back masks were distributed in November 2020.

By the end of the project, together we had provided more than 2,700 free face masks—not only throughout our local community in Hawai‘i, but to people as far away as Japan and Australia.

What stays with me most isn't the number of masks we made. It's the people I met along the way.

I received heartfelt cards, emails and messages from recipients and their families. Many later became customers and supporters of Sky Dreams, showing their Aloha to my small business long after they received their masks.

That support meant more to me than I can put into words.

The Giving Back Project became one of the most rewarding chapters in the Sky Dreams story, and a beautiful reminder of what can happen when a community comes together to help one another.

MEET THE VOLUNTEERS