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Bags to Beds

Teacher Christine Kunkel shows off a mat in progress as HIS Kids Christian School students convert plastic bags to plarn, plastic strips that can be woven or crocheted into mats that are given to the homeless.
Students make mats for homeless

JEFFERSON TWP — The students at HIS Kids Christian School are proving the saying “One man's trash is another man's treasure.”

The entire student body has been collecting plastic grocery bags and, with the help of weavers and crocheters at New Life Christian Ministries Church in Saxonburg, using them to create sleeping mats for homeless people.

Christine Kunkel, a first-grade teacher at the school at 650 Saxonburg Road, said, “Our entire school (preschool through fourth grade) participates in this community service project by collecting clean and dry plastic bags from grocery stores.”

Kunkel said, “The bags are rolled out nice and flat. Older students, those in grades three and four, cut the bottoms and handles off and then cut them into strips, knot the strips together and roll them into a ball of plastic yarn, or plarn.”

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Kunkel estimated it takes about 500 plastic bags to make one 3-foot-wide-by-six-foot-long mat.

Kunkel, a member of New Life, said the plarn balls are delivered to New Life at 139 Knoch Road, Saxonburg, where Jim Wright and his group of volunteers turn the plastic strips into sleeping mats.

“I'm retired. And three or four years ago, I learned First Methodist Church was making sleeping mats. I wanted to participate in a similar program,” said Wright

Volunteers meet once a month at New Life to convert the plarn balls into sleeping mats

While some of the volunteers crochet the plastic strips together, others use the looms that Wright built to weave the material together.

“In the four years we've been doing this, we've made 250 mats,” said Wright. “The church makes a monthly trip to the East Liberty Food Bank and hands some out, as well as at the Light of Life Ministry and the Butler VA.”

Wright said any area church interested in having some of the mats should contact New Life.

Kunkel said, one day while the students were in the cafeteria folding, cutting and rolling up collected plastic bags, “It's a great way to recycle. It helps the environment. They're available to anyone who needs a mat.“We are not just doing it in East Liberty. We'll pass out the mats to any church that needs them,” she said.So, it's a good thing that the HIS Kids students are folding, cutting and rolling their plarn balls both at school and at home.Kunkel said, “They do it when they have some free time. They love it.”Tyler Galvan, a fourth-grader, said, “We fold it, cut the bottoms off, cut the handles off. We are doing this for the homeless veterans.”Ryan Karwoski, a third-grader, said, he's collecting and converting plastic bags to plarn “for the homeless people, so they have something to sleep on.”Kim Maxwell, the third-grade teacher at HIS Kids, said, “The third grade has wholeheartedly embraced this. They take the bags home. Third grade has gone above and beyond just doing this in school.”“Teaching the importance of giving to others, whether time, money, or energy, is one of the most valuable character traits in a child of God,” said Kunkel of the students' plarn ball activities.

HIS Kids Christian School students convert plastic grocery bags into the raw material needed to make waterproof sleeping mats in the school cafeteria.

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