Planet Strawberries: Capes for kids from kids!

Thanks to Craft Hope we found out about organisation called "Enchanted Makeover" and we are very much excited to support it any way we can!

Since 2007, Enchanted Makeovers' mission has been to transform homeless shelters for women and children into places that inspire behavioral and psychological change. Through their various projects, mentoring programs, and makeovers of the physical space, women and children are introduced to a way of thinking that helps to shift their outlook about their lives and possibilities for the future. The shelter is transformed into a beacon of hope. Mentoring programs such as the Sacred Sewing Room, Stepping into the Dream, and Capes for Kids develop important life and coping skills.

When I started to share this project with people, I didn't get very positive feedback.

Many people shared thoughts that "if you would be in their position - would you care if someone would give you a cape?" Yes, I would.

And I hope that if I ever have to go through an experience like that, someone will do the same to my children.

Need of play, need of pretend play, need of imagination boost that can be brought to child with a simple cape, a toy together with attention is grater that one can imagine. For a child in such harsh living conditions, the imagination become the only escape. To put on a superhero cape and run around the field, climb the tree and inform child's fellow superheros that the day have been saved, that the sun is about to unfold and the food carried by giant dragonflies has been brought to the kingdom of grate Shelter and the next task is only for the bravest and faster superheros - to make sure that food gets served to elderly and injured warriors first! And off they go flying around their great kingdom helping to bring a smile and a hope to those who have lost it... Now how can that be a silly idea, how can this not be important? When you see a laugh from a child who has been through the most desasterous experience one can imagine, when you see a child wanting to be a help not just another mouth to feed...

An innocent child should not be exposed to world's disasters, catastrophes, life long struggles... No one should... But the reality is heartbreaking. A shelter where people are united by the worst possible cause, where you breath sadness and loneliness, where you walk a road of fear and desperation, where people around you are too occupied with caring for food supplies and searching for family members, no one stops and looks at a child as a child. Child with childish needs of a silly play... In times of crises no one stops to play... and it is understandable, of course.. There are more important things to be done than play with children. And childhood slowly gets erased, a child is being dragged to the broken world before he becomes an adult. Hope for a positive future? I don't think so.. When you meet a child, have a child or work with a child - the only way to understand him/her is to try to see the world with an eye of a child. You have been one yourself, it's impossible to forget...

The designs on the capes are entirely chosen by girls. We sat down and had a look at few fabrics we had at home and talked through what could we put on the capes. There were no question about Captain Lollypops! Flower and heart was the only option :) For "Commander Cosmos" we had to brain storm a bit. And we came up with this amazing idea to create a little universe and sew our very own Planet "Strawberries" on it :) That little red planet is ours :D

My oldest daughter cut out the entire Captain Lollipops cape and proudly operated sewing machine's pedal. Both girls made all the buttons and planets.