“It gives me a lot of joy to do this,” says Manon Desjardins, a volunteer in the MCC Quebec material resource centre in suburban Montreal, as she knots quilts. “Maybe someday I will work in an orphanage, but for now I’m touching a little part of my dream.”
In 2009, MCC Quebec expanded its material resource centre – now located on the second floor of Église Chrétienne Évangélique de Saint-Eustache – to provide space for congregations to work together to make blankets and assist with preparation of MCC kits. Currently, all volunteers are from the Saint-Eustache (MB) church.
Jeanne-Mance Bolduc began coming to the work sessions because she wanted to learn how to sew.
Marie Marthe St. Cyr first came to Canada as a visitor from Haiti in 1980 and became a permanent resident of Canada in 1986. “I do this because I want to send something to people in poor countries,” she says.
The French expression, rendre l’utile à l’agréable, guides Johanne Rochon’s thinking when she sews blankets for people in need. “It has to be nice and useful at the same time,” says the retired school teacher.
