With a bush decorated with a mask and a neighborhood set out to make a small difference, Mike Fletcher and his neighbors have started a mask donation site for their Greenwood community. “People want to help, and this is the opportunity to take care of people and get people to wear masks,” Fletcher said about the project.
The decorated bush was inspired by a similar one Fletcher had seen in the neighborhood north of them. He thought it would be a great idea to put up the face on his mother Loretta Fletcher’s house. His mother has lived there since the late 1950s and Mike Fletcher now lives next door.
Five women in the Greenwood neighborhood have been hard at work making masks that are free to take in exchange for a donation of three cans of food — all on the honor system and limited to two masks per family.
The mask and donation site have been up since Saturday, May 9th on the corner of Northwest 81st Street and 1st avenue Northwest. It’s open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. As of Friday, they have collected about 300 donations that will be given to the local Ballard food bank, Mike Fletcher says.
“We would love to have more masks makers to help our cause,” Mike Fletcher said. Also, he’d like to encourage other neighborhoods in Seattle to start their own mask exchange.