Related Issue
June–August 2020
Service & Advocacy
Better than Nothing
Founder of Pussyhat turns to making
homemade masks
homemade masks
By BAM Staff / June–August 2020
June 4th, 2020
“I was reluctant to encourage making handmade masks because I didn’t want to encourage a false sense of security,” says Pussyhat and Welcome Blanket founder Jayna Zweiman ’01 on the website of her latest venture, Masks for Humanity, “until conversations with friends and family in healthcare and articles about hospitals calling out for help changed my mind.”
Even the CDC says homemade masks can be helpful “as a last resort.” Zweiman had an established network of “craftivists” and reached out to Jonas Clark at Brown’s Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, who helped her fine-tune the hub that links makers to those who need masks. To request masks and find sewing patterns, visit masks4humanity.org. “We aren’t pretending this is okay,” Zweiman says.
