CARISA LEE

Since the COVID-19 out­break was deemed a pan­dem­ic on March 12, peo­ple all around the world and even here at home have been con­tribut­ing to lim­it­ing the spread.

Mu­si­cians host­ed on­line con­certs to en­cour­age peo­ple to stay at home and help flat­ten the curve by en­ter­tain­ing them.

Chefs have done the same, us­ing their so­cial me­dia plat­forms to show peo­ple recipes they can try.

Then, there are the front line work­ers who are un­able to stay at home and that’s who fash­ion de­sign­er An­na White was think­ing of when she de­cid­ed to sew 55 reusable masks for po­lice of­fi­cers.

“I was think­ing that I have a skill set, I can’t make hand san­i­tiz­er but I can make face masks,” White said.

White along with her daugh­ter Nyki­ma Strak­er spent three days cre­at­ing a blue­print for the mask as they want­ed it to be com­fort­able for the of­fi­cers.

“Be­cause I am slight­ly claus­tro­pho­bic I didn’t want any­thing touch­ing my mouth or my nose,” White said.

“I’m think­ing if it’s me and I am out there pa­trolling I wouldn’t want to have some­thing on my face con­stant­ly,” she con­tin­ued.

Af­ter the de­sign was fi­nalised they con­tact­ed the Four Roads Po­lice Sta­tion and asked if of­fi­cers there would be in­ter­est­ed in what they had to of­fer.

White said the of­fi­cers told her they would wel­come it and she even vis­it­ed the sta­tion to give a tu­to­r­i­al on how to use the masks.

But why would the of­fi­cers need a les­son on how to use the masks? Well, that’s be­cause White did not just cre­ate a reusable mask, with an arch with mesh ma­te­r­i­al to keep it off the of­fi­cers face. She al­so in­clud­ed a pock­et where a gauze, which she al­so con­tributed, can be in­sert­ed to in­crease pro­tec­tion.

“I was think­ing be­cause they are go­ing to be on the front line and in­ter­act­ing with per­sons who may be sick they would want that ex­tra pro­tec­tion,” White said.

Now, since de­liv­er­ing the masks, White said sev­er­al of­fi­cers ex­pressed grat­i­tude, through mes­sages, for her con­tri­bu­tion.

“They were thank­ful,” she said.

The fash­ion de­sign­er ad­mit­ted that she wished she could have giv­en more but the places where she gets the ma­te­r­i­al re­main closed as they are non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es. Her busi­ness as well was closed when we vis­it­ed.

“I didn’t get to see any of­fi­cer wear­ing the masks as I have been obey­ing the law and stay­ing home,” she said.

White sewed the masks in black cloth to en­sure they match the po­lice uni­forms but every mask had a unique print on it.

Writ­ten in white on each mask are the words, “#Stay­ingsafe” a print done by the fash­ion de­sign­er’s daugh­ter Strak­er who owns a print­ing com­pa­ny.

“I try to put my­self in the po­si­tion on some­body on the front line they might be feel­ing fear or anx­i­ety and I de­cid­ed to put a pos­i­tive mes­sage,” Strak­er said.

“We want­ed to give them the ex­tra push,” she con­tin­ued.

Strak­er said when of­fi­cers saw the mes­sage they felt em­pow­ered.