Group sews over 400 face masks provided for young people leaving care in the county

With wearing a face covering becoming mandatory when entering shops to slow the spread of coronavirus, members of the Butterfly Legacy Project group have kindly made and provided care leavers in the county with free face masks.

These were handed over last week in readiness for the new national guidelines for customers in shops.

The Cambridgeshire group has been busy during lockdown making and donating thousands of face masks and scrubs for staff at local hospitals.

Jackie Westwood, from the project, said: “We are a volunteer group and have around 2,000 members. Since the start of lockdown we have been sewing scrubs, hats and bags for the NHS. We’ve donated these to several hospitals in Cambridgeshire, along with care homes, GPs and community care outlets.

“We recognised the need for face cover early on and have helped several areas of the community. We donated 2,000 masks to Peterborough City Council, around 2,000 to Age UK and another 4,000 to food banks, community health care and the general public for free.

“We are always in need of elastic fabric and this can be from people’s own collections or purchased from our Amazon wish list. We have also organised with Escape and Create in St Ives for them to stock and give away for free the face coverings to anyone that needs one. We have used their business by purchasing materials from there, helping them at a difficult time.”

Coun Simon Bywater, chairman of the children and young peoples committee on the county council, said: “Jackie and her team have worked extremely hard and the fact they’ve produced so many masks in a short space of time is just incredible. We would like to thank the group for this generous donation which has come at an opportune time with the new health and safety guidelines around face coverings coming into force.”

For more information about the Butterfly Legacy Project and how to donate fabric to them visit the group’s Facebook page.