A continuing service project for Pine Bluff Arsenal's Child, Youth and School Services Center has fast become a favorite activity for several students at the center. Beginning September 2012, students began learning to knit with a goal of making hats to donate to Arkansas Children's Hospital's "Knitting for Noggins" program.
Six years later, the Nifty Knitters Club is still knitting and donating hats to the same program.
"We found out about this project from Becky Vaughn-Holsted (who is the SAC/MST director) who volunteered at the hospital," said Tanya Tiernan, CYSS program lead. "We started out teaching some of the adults here with kits and decided we could teach the kids how to do it too. It is really very simple."
Tiernan said that the club, which includes about 10 girls, meets every Monday now for their knitting circle. "After school we sit and talk and knit," she said. "Even during free time, the girls will take their looms out and knit."
The goal is to have approximately 30 hats done by March to donate. "We started in October and are doing really well. We have knitted more this year than in years past. We knit hats for older kids and babies even," said Tiernan. "We try to make all different kinds and colors for girls and boys."
Tiernan said that the yarn is donated by some of the families. "Some of the kids having been knitting since they were in kindergarten," she said.
Presley Milburn, who is in the fourth grade, has been with the club since she was in kindergarten, said that knitting helps her brain relax.
The hospital has collected over 310,000 hats since the beginning of the program, according to their website.
This is a wonderful way to teach community service, said Vaughn-Holsted. "We are teaching them to give back," she said. "This is something that they can take with them into adulthood."
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