Students craft an afghan
in humanitarian effort
MILLTOWN — With a little thread and a lot of love, a small group of local students pieced together an art project that will soon find its way to war-torn Afghanistan.
"They did this for someone who was driven from their home; who was cold," commented Joanne Traskiewicz, a Joyce Kilmer Elementary School art teacher as she described the efforts of 11 sixth-grade students who spent the past four months weaving panels on looms to create a 38-by-38-inch afghan.
The afghan was recently shipped to a San Francisco humanitarian group called Afghans for Afghans, Traskiewicz said. She heard about the group in January and pitched the idea to some of her students who sometimes visited her in the school art room instead of spending time outdoors during lunch recess.
After 9/11, a group of women in San Francisco decided to create an organization to help war-torn refugees in Afghanistan, Traskiewicz said.
Since then, thousands of afghans from throughout the country have been shipped overseas. Traskiewicz said that when she told the students about the San Francisco group in January, they immediately wanted to get involved.
"They were doing it for someone else. That’s what made the project special," Traskiewicz said. "It didn’t start out as an art project. Students can come up to the art room instead of going outside. They saw the looms in my room. They never did loom work before."
Traskiewicz said the students were eager to get started on the project, but soon discovered how time-consuming the process was.
She said that Brittany Gonzalez and Elizabeth O’Brien, both 12, inspired others to help create dozens of individual panels that the students sewed together to create the afghan.
"I wasn’t sure the students would be committed to the project because of the time involved to do it," Traskiewicz said. "It can take up to nine hours to create one square on a loom. Brittany and Elizabeth were the leaders. They corralled other students to help. Everyone was really fired up about it because the project was going to help somebody."
Students worked on the afghan during school hours and some also worked on the project at home, Traskiewicz said. The afghan was recently mailed to San Francisco and will soon be shipped to Afghanistan.