On Tuesday, April 30, Annette Bowen and Lowell Perman, two volunteers with the American Red Cross in Huron, visited Sanborn Central School to talk to the third through fifth graders about the Pillowcase Project. 

The Pillowcase Project was created by the American Red Cross in Southeast Louisiana and implemented in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Kay Wilkins, Southeast Louisiana regional executive, had learned that Loyola University students carried their valuables in pillowcases when they were evacuated for Hurricane Katrina. This inspired Wilkins and her team to work with an art therapist to create a program in which children living in makeshift communities across New Orleans decorated pillowcases as emergency supplies kits. Soon, the Pillowcase Project became a preparedness education program for elementary school students.

Between 2013 and 2016, the Red Cross redesigned the program, pilot tested it in several communities, and expanded it nationwide. The Pillowcase Project is now the signature youth preparedness program for the Red Cross and is available throughout the country.

…Read on and see pictures in this week’s issue of the Sanborn Weekly Journal.