The Downtown Eastside (DTES), on top of being the poorest postal code in Canada, is also a gathering place for Vancouver’s homeless. In this neighbourhood, there is a higher concentration of unemployed and low-income families who cannot afford luxuries such as basic sanitizing facilities or masks for personal protection. 
To help struggling members of this community, the Lotus Light Charity Society (LLCS), located in the DTES, decided to mobilize a group of volunteers to produce 10,000 reusable and washable cloth masks which will be distributed to the vulnerable free of charge.
Sewing the 10,000 masks, however, was no small feat, especially due to the supply chain being affected by the pandemic. For example, the price of cloth drastically multiplied in the last few months, with black-colored cloth, one of the more popular colour variants, quadrupling in price. Large cloth shops and stores were also out of stock, and online orders faced significant shipping delays and complications. Furthermore, bundles of elastic bands, worth merely a few cents the year before, now became a dozen times more expensive than their original price.
To work with the limited funds for this project, the LLCS urgently mobilized volunteers to visit cloth shops around the city to gather cotton cloths for the project. After describing the need to produce masks for the vulnerable, a generous cloth shop owner sold us various materials needed for mask production at a low cost. Some benevolent people overseas heard that the charity could not order elastic bands domestically, so they took the initiative to contact local manufacturers to order bands at their own expense and shipped them directly to Vancouver.
One boss of a garment factory only charged the LLCS a small fee for cutting the cloth, allowing volunteers to save time sewing the masks to maximize efficiency and production. In just a few days, volunteers used their spare time to make thousands of masks that will soon be delivered to the vulnerable.
The LLCS would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the volunteers, corporate and individual sponsors, and all the generous businesses and individuals who made this project successful! Thank you for supporting the LLCS throughout the pandemic!
