Showing ‘another side to giving’

AMES, Iowa — There’s a lot that’s warm and fuzzy about the service-learning project going on in Leslie Boylan’s seventh-grade homeroom at Ames Middle School.

The students are making 50 fleece lap blankets as a component of a gift bag project for patients undergoing cancer treatment at Mary Greeley Medical Center.

Boylan did the legwork to launch the project when she took a service-learning class through Story County Volunteers in conjunction with the Heartland Area Education Association.

When she learned there was a $500 grant offered, Boylan applied for it, asking to work with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans to help with the patient gift packages.

When Boylan got the grant, Thrivent Financial representative Jenifer Leiding got involved.

Leiding said working with Boylan’s class offers a chance to exercise two of her passions. She is a former teacher and she’s had a concern for cancer patients since her father was treated at Mary Greeley Medical Center six years ago.

“I never knew how to say thank you to the Mary Greeley staff for the care they gave my father,” she said. “This project is helping me to do that.”

Leiding said that when she joined Thrivent she was pleased to learn about the organization’s policy for giving back to the community.

“They allowed me a $2,000 budget to develop the gift bags for patients,” she said.

Having raised the $2,500, Boylan and Leiding enlisted Ames Middle School students to help. Now many fingers are busy measuring, cutting and tying the fleece for the blankets.

“It’s a win-win for everyone,” Leiding said.

Leiding gets help with the blankets; the grant Boylan applied for helps defray the cost for the project; and Boylan’s class gets a service-learning activity.

It’s not the first time Boylan and Leiding have worked together on a student service-learning project. Last spring, they organized a project called Kids Against Hunger by Outreach-International, Boylan said.

“The project filled bags of food that fed six people per bag and packaged meals for 12,000 people,” she said. “Thrivent Financial paid for the food, and AMS students packaged it.”

Leiding said that project was so successful the students wanted more service projects and Thrivent was willing to help.

Brooke Tesdall, 13, is one of the eighth-graders who volunteered again this year.

“I’m learning there’s another side to giving,” she said. “You always get something back. I get a good feeling from this project.”

The hard work will culminate on Christmas Eve, when the Mary Greeley Medical Center oncology staff will treat patients, in the hospital and at home, to carols and gift bags containing the blankets along with soft tissues, warm gloves and socks, snacks and comfort items.

Leiding said memories of her father, Don Reick, a former director of Iowa State University’s Instructional Technologies Department, keep her motivated, even when she develops blisters on her hands from cutting the fleece. Reick died four years ago in October.

“I just remember who I’m doing this for, and it makes it all worthwhile,” she said.