Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410140017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
She apologized profusely for getting her words mixed up. She had a hard time stitching her quilt and talking about the Child Health Investment Partnership at the same time.
"It's hard to describe," said Sawyer, 30, sitting among a room full of quilters in a meeting room at Roanoke's Second Presbyterian Church. "I've always wanted to have a super-duper job like a lawyer or a reporter. ... Doing this for CHIP, I don't know, it just makes me feel important.
"For the first time, I feel important."
What Sawyer is doing is giving back to CHIP, the organization that gives poor and working-class children "medical homes," providing them with consistent preventive and sick care, and a case manager to help with families' social problems. Sawyer's 3-year-old daughter, Shawna, has been a CHIP client since birth.
Now Sawyer and other CHIP mothers are returning the favors - making quilts to be sold at the Nov. 11-12 Stocked Market. Proceeds from the $50 quilts will benefit CHIP's parent-support activities: class fees for GED training, bus passes to classes at Virginia Western, money to get a driver's license.
"I think it's exactly what programs like CHIP are supposed to do - empower people and give them a boost," said Mary Lyn McBride, development manager. "Instead of us earning money for them, they're earning money for each other."
The parenting group is an outgrowth of the 7-year-old program, which has been used as a model for 11 other communities across Virginia. Before the parents took on the project, most of the organization's volunteers were wives of doctors affiliated with CHIP.
"Our parents now are at a point where they're feeling really good about themselves," McBride said. "It's like Maslow's needs hierarchy: When your basic needs aren't taken care of, you don't look around and wonder, who else needs help?"
Getting the parents to raise money for the program not only boosts their self-esteem, they say. It also encourages them to take responsibility - for both the program and themselves.
"When you go down and fill out food stamps, there's nothing positive about it," said Rhonda Pendleton, who was putting the binding on her quilt with the help of veteran quilter Vicki Wilson, also a CHIP mother. "The way they treat you at CHIP, it's not like any other kind of program. "It just makes you wanna do things back."
Pendleton's 3-year-old son joined CHIP when her husband was injured and out of work, cutting the family's health insurance. When her son was 2, a CHIP worker referred him to a speech therapist, who figured out that multiple ear infections were interfering with the child's hearing - and therefore his ability to speak.
"Without the early intervention, it's hard to say how far behind he'd be now," Pendleton said. "Now he's caught up; he's fine. Before CHIP, I couldn't even afford to take him to the doctor."
Without CHIP, the family also couldn't have afforded the GED classes her husband is now taking - with an eye toward changing careers should he never fully recover.
At the latest quilt gathering, Pendleton and the other women discussed future parent programs on feeling pretty, positive child discipline, stress relief, bankruptcy, sibling rivalry and special education.
They also talked about how to maneuver a back-stitch - so the knots of thread don't show - while discussing the merits of Drucilla's decision to tell Neil that she's pregnant, even though the baby may not be his.
"What?" Pendleton asked after hearing snippets of the debate. "It's 'Young & The Restless,'" Dreama Stacy explained.
"Drucilla, she told her husband because she found out she can't have any more babies," Sawyer interjected.
Sawyer said she benefits from the social aspect of the group as much as anything. "Getting involved with this is the best thing I've ever done," she said. "Without this, I'd never get out of the house. All this working and talking and carrying on - it just makes you feel good, from your heart, that you're making some money to give back."
Stacy, whose daughter has been with CHIP for five years, considers herself working class. "We get no help, no welfare or food stamps. We're check-to-check." CHIP workers not only diagnosed and treated her daughter's anemia-induced eating problems. They also helped her move out of substandard housing, arranging for deposit money and a lawyer to help with landlord problems.
"I didn't know how we would get out of that mess; all I knew was we'd be out on the streets," she recalled. "If it wasn't for them, I don't know where I'd be right now."
And so with every stitch, Stacy looks forward to giving money back to CHIP. With every stitch, she gains a little more confidence - not just in her ability to quilt, but also in herself.
When CHIP worker Barbara Putney told the group it was their job to decide how to spend the money, the women all shied away from it, telling her to decide. But at a recent meeting, the mothers enjoyed their newfound responsibility, sharing their own opinions about how the money should be spent.
"I think the money should go to the emergency fund," said Stacy.
"I owe them a lot."
by CNB