Suitcases for foster kids: It’s been a long struggle | READER COMMENTARY

Many have labored long hours to provide Maryland's youth in foster care with more than trash bags to carry their belongings.

Thank you for your endorsement  of the recently enacted Maryland Department of Human Services requirement to provide new luggage to foster children (“What’s in a suitcase?  Dignity for Maryland’s foster children,” May 7). We must take issue with one assumption included in your editorial however. You ask: “Did no one see the need earlier?” Well, of course they did.

Legislation like this does not just appear out of thin air. Someone with long-standing knowledge and no doubt infinite patience made the case for this legislation to just the right people at just the right time to make it happen.

But we remember back in 2015, the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Maryland Chapter of the American Sewing Guild (ASG), Carnitra White, eloquently described the indignity suffered by foster children given little notice of their displacement who were handed a trash bag and told to pack their things. For the next three years our ASG chapter chose to sew duffle bags for foster youth as our community service project.

One of our members, Carolyn Pesterfield, devoted countless hours testing designs, fabrics, threads, straps, then writing detailed instructions so that our members could eventually produce over 1,000 sturdy, denim duffle bags for these youth. All materials and labor were donated free of charge for the children. But ASG is not a factory, so we are beyond pleased that this seemingly small but meaningful gesture will now become a standard, sustainable part of the foster care program.

So to your question, yes, lots of people saw this need earlier and tried to address it.

— Luanne Hargadon, Catonsville

— Carolyn Pesterfield, Annapolis

— Lorraine Rohlik, Jessup

The writers are, respectively, president of the Maryland Chapter of the American Sewing Guild, former community service chair of ASG-MD, and a current chapter member.

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