In Joshua Bond’s January 29, 2015, costume design class, students abandoned their usual
Students in Bond’s class making pouches to send to Australia.
coursework in favor of a much simpler task – creating small, square pouches for baby kangaroos, wallabies and other marsupials in Australia.
The animals were orphaned by recent southern-Australian brushfires, and their caretakers need washable, 100 percent-cotton pouches to provide appropriate shelter. Bond learned about the need for pouches on The Rachel Maddow Show and asked his students if they would be up for helping. After they enthusiastically agreed, he asked College faculty and staff to donate cotton sheet sets, blankets and other fabric.
READ: Check out the call for pouches from the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
“Everything we’re using was a donation from faculty and staff. It has truly been a campus community effort.” Bond said.
The Rachel Maddow segment, which covered a variety of animal clothes-making projects over the years, was especially inspiring to Bond, who said, “The show discussed the volunteer knitters who made sweaters for battery hens that shed, or for penguins caught in an oil spill. I was like, ‘If I’m going to knit a sweater, it’s going to be for a penguin.’”
Each student in the class of 16, as well as Bond, is making a pouch. They plan to mail the pouches to Australia on February 3, 2015.
