Volunteers make masks to protect children, who can go outside from Sunday

After weeks confined to their homes due to the coronavirus restrictions, from this Sunday children under 14 will be allowed to go outside with an adult for an hour a day in order to get some exercise and fresh air.

As a precaution, the health authorities advise that children over the age of 3 wear masks while they are outside, and while many households around Catalonia have children desperate to get out of the house, few have masks that might fit them.

To help remedy this situation, groups of volunteers around the country have for the past few days been making children's masks by the score, which are then either delivered directly to the homes of families or can be picked up at a designated spot.

An example is Maria Mercè Fernández, from Sant Julià de Ramis in the northern region of Girona. She and her husband are among local volunteers who were making masks for the Mutuam health center but who have switched to making children's masks. 

While Maria sews cotton filters into the fabric of the mask with a sewing machine, beside her at the dining room table, her husband cuts out fabric pieces with a pattern. However, rather than just white masks, those the couple now make are in vivid colors with motifs. 

Cooperation between volunteers and local council

Days before the directive allowing children to go outside was officially announced, the local council and the group of volunteers coordinated to start making masks for the children, so that by this weekend all families in the village will have them.

"We saw that it was impossible to buy them because they are nowhere to be found, and that's why it occurred to us that they could be made by volunteers," says the mayor of Sant Julià de Ramis, Marc Puigtió.

"We sew the masks in two sizes: some smaller ones for boys and girls between 3 and 7 years old, and others for those between 8 and 12 years old," says the coordinator of the volunteers, Imma López. 

The town council bought the materials needed for the masks, which municipal workers distribute to the homes of the volunteers and then return later to collect the finished articles, and after that, they deliver the masks to the homes of families that need them.

So far, a hundred children's masks have been distributed in Sant Julià de Ramis. "And now we have about 150 more ready," says Puigtió, who adds that the aim is for all of them to be delivered this weekend, so that "all the children will be protected on the street."

Initiatives to be found around Catalonia

Yet, Sant Julià de Ramis is just one of many towns around Catalonia that have been making masks. In Jonquera, for example, near the Spain-France border, the masks made by a local group of volunteers can be picked up at a store or supermarket. 

Besalú in the Girona county of La Garrotxa is another example, as is Celrà in the county of Gironès, while another group of volunteers in the Baix Empordà county has made 1,500 masks for children in the seaside town of Palamós.

Yet the wave of solidarity is not limited to the north, as there are similar initiatives in such places as Seu d'Urgell, Ulldecona, Les Franqueses del Vallès, Ampolla, Santpedor, Casserres, Malgrat de Mar, Terrassa, Aiguamúrcia, and Alcover, to name a few.