Pomona students recently helped Chinese orphans by making 30 quilts. The students from Patty Lancaster’s fifth hour Fashion and Clothing class, offered by the Consumer and Family Studies Department, worked numerous hours last semester on the project members of FCCLA also helped.

The project, known as Blankets of Love and was organized by Patti Lynch, who had adopted a Chinese orphan and was thus inspired to help such an orphanage. The quilts will be used to keep the children warm in the un-heated orphanage, scheduled to open on June 1, 2001, International Children’s Day. As Lancaster stated, “It was a community service project outside the community.” This was the Fashion and Clothing class’ third project of the year. The project began November 30, and ran to the end of the semester

Lancaster then elaborated on the fact that students got a chance to learn a little about the living conditions in China. Lancaster explained that Chinese families are only allowed one child and many others are abandoned; left in dumpsters, bathrooms and rice fields, resulting in large numbers of children without a home or a family.

She also explained that in China families want to have boys rather than girls because retirees do not have social security as a rule adult sons can better support their parents better when they grow old and are unable to work.

“ I heard a lot of them [Pomona students] say how lucky they were here in the United States, and that they didn’t realize the way things were in China,” elaborated Lancaster on the feelings of the students who worked on the Blankets of Love project.

The students worked about 20 hours on the project. These students include: Seniors; Cory Campbell, Jessica Ellis, Tara Evans, Candon Murphy, Alex Rensink, and Allana Sear, Juniors; Shannon Bell, Jami Finley, and Charlie Werner, Sophomores; Katie Brock, Amanda Brownell, May Vang, Mandy Webb, and Andrea Vonderlinden, and Freshmen; Christine Hedlun, Rosa Monrique, Jessica Oxford, Kim Price, Tonya True, April Williams, and Kelsey Sharf.