Generations SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO THE GLOBE
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Soaking up love Worthington women ‘sew an hour for the Lord’ BY JANE TURPIN MOORE The Globe
WORTHINGTON — A faith-based project begun over a decade ago is still going strong, albeit with somewhat fewer dedicated souls regularly involved. For more than 10 years, Sandy Ponto, JoAnn Polzine and Dee Ella have sewn cloth diapers that are ultimately shipped to Haiti for use at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage in Port-au-Prince — and they haven’t stopped yet. “I usually sew for five to six hours a day,” said Ponto, 70. “I do it while watching TV, and it’s fun; it gets in your blood, and they (the diapers) are so cute.” Due to extreme poverty in the country, Haiti has a high number of children who are not necessarily true “orphans” but whose parents have abandoned them due to a lack of ability to supply their most basic human needs, such as adequate food and clean water. “The moms can’t get enough to eat, and their living conditions might not be sanitary, so the kids are taken to orphanages for care and to gain strength,” explained Ponto. At the Sisters of Charity Orphanage, the hundreds of resident infants and toddlers use around 1,000 diapers daily, Ponto reported.
When the St. Mary’s Catholic Church based Catholic Christian Women group learned of that need about 12 years ago, it appealed to Ponto and others. “There was a pattern we could use and a couple of us ladies decided we’d do it,” said Ponto, a 1970 Worthington High School graduate and longtime resident of rural Reading. “For a while, we had a lot of help — about six to eight of us were sewing — and over the years, we sent thousands of diapers to Haiti. One year we sent 3,000 diapers.” And in 2022, even with fewer hands at work, they finished and shipped around 2,700 diapers. The washable, reusable cloth diapers may be used dozens of times by the orphanage’s sisters before they wear out. Ponto explained the diaper pattern is an hour-glass shape, with the seamstresses inserting elastic for each leg opening. Using “retired” or stained T-shirts obtained from donations, Goodwill, Legacy Thrift (formerly Bibles for Missions Thrift Center) or other thrift shops in the area, the women cut 4-by-11-inch pads, using 10 in the center of each diaper for the “soaker” spot. “We used to use Velcro tabs but we learned from the (orphanage) sisters that the lye soap they used broke down
Photo courtesy Sandy Ponto
JoAnn Polzine and Sandy Ponto are shown with suitcases filled with handmade diapers and ready to be shipped to Haiti. the Velcro before the diapers were ready for the trash, so we switched to strips they can tie,” Ponto said. “The sisters are very happy with them.” Because of Mayo Clinic’s involvement with a medical mission in Port-auPrince, the CCW diaper sewers were able to collaborate with Mayo for shipping purposes. “A CCW woman from Rochester let us know we could send old suitcases full of diapers on the same barges Mayo was sending their outdated medical
equipment to Haiti for physicians’ use there,” said Ponto. Without that shipping assistance, the cost of getting the diapers to their destination would be prohibitive. And it added another donor opportunity to the project, since the group welcomes the gift of used suitcases in which to stow the diapers. “We can fit between 200 and 250 diapers in each suitcase,” Ponto said.
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