Volunteers Make 850 Cloth Masks for DICKEY-john Workers

No matter what’s going on around them, farmers keep working. This spring, the DICKEY-john community kept working into the evenings, doing their part to make sure our work could go on.

DICKEY-john was designated an essential business during the pandemic for the work that we do to support farmers, grain elevators, and other agricultural businesses and organizations. In order to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission between our employees, we implemented a number of safety procedures, including social distancing and disinfecting practices at our facilities. However, for a long time this spring, facemasks were hard to find.

DICKEY-john friends keep calm and sew on

Our team stepped up to take on the mask shortage challenge. Auburn, Illinois employees (and two former employees) recruited 10 volunteers from among their friends and neighbors to help create facemask kits for our essential workers. When they finished, more than 850 masks were ready to wear.

It was a major team effort. Ten volunteers with sewing skills did the sewing. Others helped by ordering fabric, thread, wire, baby wipes for filters, and small paper clips for nosepieces. They washed, dried, and ironed the materials. Using a pattern found online, they cut pieces for three sizes of masks. After the masks were sewn, helpers finished assembling them, adding ties, filters, and other parts.

For the final step, the teams created a kit for each worker that contained five masks, five extra filters, and printed instructions.

Our heartfelt thanks

We are so grateful to our friends, neighbors, and DICKEY-john employees, current and past, who made it possible for us to continue to serve our customers. We will continue to work our hardest and smartest to keep our people safe and DICKEY-john strong!