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Migrant welcome kits were assembled this year at a Northbrook annual MLK Service Day in response to the influx of migrants to Chicagoland.
Approximately 40 volunteers, youth and adults, gave of their time at Northbrook United Methodist Church (1190 Western Ave.) on Monday, Jan. 15 with several people working in the church’s library to assemble 39 migrant welcome kits.
“Our church has already assembled over the past three months 68 of them for a total of 107,” said Karen Glazer of Northbrook, the church’s financial secretary and MLK Service Day event co-chair with Karen Wells, also of Northbrook.
The migrant welcome kits were to be delivered on Jan. 16 to an Evanston church, “where a volunteer will then take them into the city (Chicago) and distribute them,” Glazer said.
“I actually haven’t delivered (to migrants personally) them, I just deliver them to Evanston, but people are so happy when you walk in and they’re (backpacks) clearly labeled,” Glazer said.
“This is the most efficient way to get clothes to migrants, rather than handing out a hat here and a coat there,” Glazer said, adding, “Separately, Northbrook and Glenview Rotary, I worked with them to get 300 coats donated to migrants.”
The Northbrook UMC kits are backpacks holding items including a long-sleeved shirt, a jacket or sweatshirt, a pair of sweatpants, lip balm, toothpaste and toothbrush, deodorant, two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, a pair of gloves and a hat. The backpacks are labeled by a person’s size.
“And the idea is that you could give these to people as they get off the bus, you can give them to migrants in police stations or going into shelters,” Glazer said.
Northbrook UMC used mission funds to purchase items.
“We also had people making donations and it’s part of our mission to serve and this is part of service,” Glazer said.
Wells said Northbrook UMC has a history of assisting people experiencing homelessness, “and now we’re actually getting together whole kits for them to survive this horrible winter.
“It’s making a difference one person at a time,” Wells added. “We’re a small church and that’s what matters.”
Monday, Jan. 15 was the holiday for 2024 when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered globally.
Rives Collins of Northbrook pushed a cart into the church’s parking lot in sub zero weather to load the completed migrant welcome kits into a car for delivery to Evanston.
“The notion of Martin Luther King Day as a day off is a misnomer,” Collins said. “It’s a day on.
“It’s a day for us to come together in community and do what we can.
“This is all joy,” Collins said.
Other service activities at the three-hour Northbrook UMC event included cleaning medicine containers, Valentine’s Day greetings for patients and veterans served by Lovell Federal Health Care, dog biscuit making and fabric pet supply collections for Heartland Animal Shelter in Northbrook and Orphans of the Storm in Riverwoods, cookie and card making for Northbrook first responders and Project Linus blanket making.
A food drive was conducted to benefit the Northfield Township Food Pantry in Glenview. A Random Acts of Kindness Pledge is in place at Northbrook UMC as a commitment to practice kindness in 2024.
Nicole Strait of Glenview, third-graders Emily Ortiz, 9, Abigail Strait, 8, and Lily Burke, 9, all of Glenview, participated at a table where volunteers could make the dog biscuits from scratch.
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“I think it’s really important that we build into the next generation and show them the opportunities they have to serve others,” Abigail’s mother Nicole said. “It’s not every day that you get to go out and you get to make a difference.”
In the company of friends, Emily Ortiz mixed ingredients in a bowl to produce the biscuits.
“If you don’t help each other, then it’ll be impossible to survive,” Emily said. “People need each other.”
Visit Northbrook UMC at https://www.northbrookumc.org.
Karie Angell Luc is a freelancer for Pioneer Press.