By AUBRIE GEORGE
The Marlton Telegram
Throughout the year, the Marlton Woman’s Club stays busy helping those in need. So when a deadly earthquake devastated an entire nation, it stepped in.
In February, the club held a workshop at the Gibson House where it invited residents of Marlton and surrounding communities to join them in assembling blankets to send to victims of the earthquake in Haiti.
Using donated materials along with some they brought themselves, club members and community members worked together to assemble and collect 57 blankets, which they donated to Haitian children through Project LINUS, MWC president, June Adair, said.
Some of the blankets they made from scratch, but other already-made blankets were collected and donated as well, Adair said.
Project LINUS, a national organization devoted to providing warmth and comfort to ill, traumatized, or needy children through gifts of new, handmade blankets and afghans, has set out to collect 10,000 blankets across the country that it plans to send to victims in Haiti.
Adair said the MWC decided to join in the nation-wide effort at the encouragement of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, a national organization that the club is affiliated with.
The group has worked with project LINUS before but saw the initiative as a way to help out a cause members had been interested in getting involved in, Adair said.
“We had wanted to do something to help out in Haiti,” Adair said.
The MWC is a service group that takes on a number of initiatives throughout the year, which aim to help out. Its goal, mostly, is to help children, she said.
Some other initiatives the club has taken on this year include supporting Autism New Jersey through fund raisers and donations as well as holding events that raise awareness for autism, providing items for children through Operation Smile, holding fund raisers to fund scholarships for local high school and middle school students, holding conservation projects for recycling and beautification, and providing high school junior girls with the opportunity to go to the Girls Career Institute at Douglass College for a mini college experience.
For more information about the Marlton Woman’s Club, visit its Web site at www.marltonwomansclub.com.
