Another heartwarming story of kindness from our #InThisTogether series.
Edinburgh Tool Library (ETL) had to close its doors and put most staff on furlough. Founder Chris Hellawell was keen to continue the ethos of the charity and use their resources to help the community.
“We looked at what other organisations were doing to see if we could help them. First, we looked at Bridge 8 Hub, who were working with Bikes For Refugees, helping key workers get to their jobs without using public transport, by lending them bikes. We have run bike programmes at ETL so we sent over all our bike tools to increase their capacity.”
Workshop director Jonny decided to volunteer with Whale Arts, making food and delivering art supplies in the library van to the Wester Hailes community.
Most recently they have donated sewing machines to a new initiative Edinburgh Mask Makers, which is a Facebook group of 400 volunteers who are making non-surgical masks for carers. The masks are collected in three locations in Edinburgh and the tool library volunteers are helping manage the collection and distribution. The group is also looking to match up people who have sewing machines that they don’t use with people who want to make the masks. So if you’re in Edinburgh and have a sewing machine that you don’t use or if you’d like to help make the masks please get in touch with the Edinburgh Mask Makers through their Facebook group or by emailing Edinburgh Tool Library
Chris told us “I’m really hopeful that some positive things will come out of this, not just tragedy. I feel like this is a bit of a shot across our bows in terms of the world living in an unsustainable way, and initiatives like the tool library offer people an alternative way of doing things that I’m hoping will become the norm. We are sharing pain right now, but I look forward to sharing joy, and space and tools, and smiles with people.”
If you’re an accredited Living Wage employer we’d love to share your good news story with our network. So please get in touch and let us know what you’re doing for your employees or the community.