Students at Franklin Community High School helped troops get into the Christmas spirit.
Members of the school’s Family, Career and Community Leaders of America Club helped make stockings to send to troops overseas.
Club adviser Barb Torrey tells you what you need to know about the event.
What is Stockings for Soldiers?
For the past several years the American Sewing Guild of Indianapolis has been working with the Hillcrest Angels in Indianapolis to make brightly colored Christmas stockings for our Indiana soldiers who are overseas so they can have a little taste of home at Christmas. The American Sewing Guild makes 3,000 to 5,000 stockings each year then gives them to the Hillcrest Angels group which fills the stockings and sends them overseas to our soldiers.
Do you make the stockings?
FCCLA has been helping to construct stockings for this project for the past three years. Students in the fashion and textiles classes and students in FCCLA make some stockings for this project during the school year. Three years ago, the FCCLA District VP of Community Service was from Franklin and we decided to expand this to a district-wide project. During our first year, students from our district constructed 376 stockings. Last year we constructed 517 stockings, and this year our grand total was 535 stockings! The American Sewing Guild of Indianapolis has donated some of the fabric for the stockings and we have had donations from the Nimble Thimbles Quilt Club, too.
Why did you choose this cause?
Part of the mission of FCCLA is to “promote personal growth and leadership development through family and consumer sciences education” and one of its purposes is to provide opportunities for personal development and preparation for adult life. It is important for students to learn life skills and to use their time and their skills in a constructive manner. Participating in a community service project like this allows the students to use their skills to help others. I try to provide lots of opportunities for community service throughout the year which the students can add to their college and scholarship applications.
What did students get out of it?
Students take great pride in participating in a big project like this. Quite a few of the students had never touched a sewing machine until they participated in this project. Last year we had a foreign exchange student from Shelbyville High School who had never sewn and asked if she could send one of the stockings she made to her mother in South America. (How could I say no?) We are fortunate to have a nice sewing lab at Franklin and great support from the administration and community, but not all schools are so lucky.
What did you want the students to learn that day?
I hope the students learned that they can make a difference in another person’s life by giving their time and talents to a worthy cause. I always hope to instill a love of sewing and creating things. In the world of work, students will have to work with others, divide tasks, communicate and produce. The students worked together in an organized manner and accomplished quite a bit that day—more than just producing Christmas stockings!
What other projects do you have planned?
Our FCCLA is planning to do some community service hours at one of the local nursing homes before Christmas and prepare some small gifts of appreciation for our Franklin teachers at Christmas.
We will be participating in the March of Dimes Walk for Babies in the spring. Currently we are focusing our time on developing projects which will be entered into competition at our Indiana FCCLA State Leadership Conference in March. Students can take some of the community service projects that we have done so far this year and develop them into a project which can bring them more recognition. We also hope that we will have more national qualifiers who can compete at the national meeting next summer.
