Colorado Woman Make Blankets for Children in Need

If you are looking for a unique way to help children in need, (besides making a charitable donation and wondering how many pennies out of each of your dollars will actually help a child), I would like to introduce you to a woman who has spent the last 5 years of her life making little blankets --- she calls them "Blankys" --- for the sick children of friends and neighbors and co-workers and strangers, and for children in hospitals and orphanages around the world. She has seen her blankets comfort children living in unbelievable poverty, and she has seen her blankets adorning the caskets of children. But through it all, she has continued her mission to bring some happiness to children throughout the world with her Blankys.

Her name is GrandMa-RaRa, (a nickname given to her by one of her grandchildren who couldn't say her name - "Rhonda"), and her mission to "Wrap the World's Children in Warmth," began on January 23, 2003. How does she remember the exact date? "I stopped at a garage sale, and I saw this sewing machine for $30," she says, admitting that she hadn't sewn anything in years, and at the time couldn't figure out why she was drawn to the machine. She bought the machine, took it home, and almost immediately, the idea of sewing blankets for children in need came to her "like a blossoming flower."

Rhonda has no doubt that this mission was sent to her by God, because it just "started rolling" almost immediately. Right after she bought the sewing machine, she found herself in a beauty parlor she'd never been to before, talking to a stranger in the next chair, and by the time she left, "I told her I would make 200 blankets for her." The blankets ended up being sent to children in 9 countries. She learned that her boss (yes, she works full-time, too!!) had a ministry in Kenya that involved an orphanage. "I sent a few Blankys with him every time he left on a trip." And although she estimates she has made "over 3000" Blankys in the past 5 years, it was the Blankys that she sent to Kenya that eventually led to one of the most moving experiences she has had since she began sewing her "Grandma-RaRa's Blankys."

In February of 2007, a little over 4 years after she began sewing the blankets, she had the opportunity to accompany her boss on a missionary trip to Kenya, and to finally visit the Tumaini orphanage that had been receiving her blankets. Although she knew, at least in the back of her mind, that this is where her blankets had been going, she was still startled almost to tears when she walked into the little orphanage and saw her Blankys on each of the little beds lined up in a row. "It was like coming full circle," she says of the experience.

Rhonda has also personally taken Blankys to India and Mexico, and never seems to leave home anymore, even when she goes on vacation, without taking a few Blankys along. "The trip to Mexico was a vacation - my boyfriend proposed to me on that trip - but we still took a day out of our trip to wander around the city and we found this hospital that took care of the poor," and she left several Blankys with the doctor who ran that hospital.

She has taken, and sent, her Blankys to places all over the US, and to dozens of countries around the world with various charitable and missionary groups. She would love to make a trip to Russia some day to take some of her Blankys to the orphanages in that country. And through it all, she has made all of her Blankys on the same $30 sewing machine, and has only had to replace the needle twice. I'm pretty sure she's gotten her money's worth out of that bargain!

Besides her primary mission of making these Blankys for children, she has also found the time to make a few for some prominent adults as well, including George and Laura Bush, Senator Bob Beauprez of Colorado, and astronaut Jeff Ashby. She has given a Blanky to "a friend whose father is a rocket scientist," and she has been invited to attend a rocket launch "in 2008 or 2009," to see the rocket carrying her blanket blast off into space.

Grandma RaRa recently "went live" on the Internet with the opening of her website, GrandMa Rara's Blankys. Her site is filled with photos of children and their Blankys, as well as ways that individuals and corporations can help her cause. Several options are available to visitors of the site, from buying a blanket of their own or for a gift (in 3 different sizes) to making a directed donation to a charitable organization of their choice, or a non-directed donation that will go toward materials to make blankets that she will donate to charities worldwide.

In addition to recycling all money she makes from her online sales right back into material and supplies for new Blankys, Rhonda also donates a percentage of the sale of each blanket sold online to a sub-team of the Circle of Light "Light4Africa" ministry group, known simply as Circle, whose "mission is to raise money for the families of Africa to bring energy and light into their homes."

Donated blankets are tax deductible if a directed donation is directed to a charity or left non-directed. All non-directed Blankys are grouped and donated to charities ranging from homes for pregnant teens to international children's charities. Purchased blankets cannot currently be claimed as a tax deduction (you can buy them in small, medium or large, and you can tell her what color, design, etc. you would like on the Blanky - she will try to accommodate all requests, but can't guarantee that she will be able to find a certain pattern), because Rhonda is still working through the necessary paperwork to make GrandMa-RaRa's a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. But GrandMa RaRa hopes that people will purchase her Blankys anyway, take them to a nearby orphanage or hospital to give to a child in need, so everyone can experience the joy that she feels knowing that her Blankys are helping make the lives of little girls and boys around the world a little brighter because they have one of GrandMa RaRa's Blankys to call their very own. What better mission could there be than that?