Joanne Tolles has put together and organized now for the second year in a row, a collaborative craft including heartfelt messages to brighten up patients’ days. It’s another one of ACE’s ways they give back to the community. ACE understands and sympathizes with the patients and families of the Danbury Hospital Praxair Cancer Center.
Joanne states, “We want the community to know that we care about not only ourselves and our building, but we care about what happens outside of the building and how we can make Danbury a better place for everybody.” The ACE community acknowledges that cancer is very strenuous, draining and emotional, and the project was a school wide effort that all students were proud to take part in. “The Christmas after covid ACE not only wanted to bring the school together on a project but also take the emphasis off of us suffering through the covid pandemic and put it on others. I had been there for a simple blood test and I had seen how nice the people at Praxair were, so I got in contact with the social worker there and asked if they would like us to do a project for the Praxair people and they said yes so we did homemade cards, they came out very beautiful and we brought them to Praxair. The next year my husband actually happened to get cancer so I got really intimately involved with Praxair and we did the snowflakes for the second year, and the staff and patients really loved the snowflakes. So this summer when I continued taking my husband for his cancer treatments they were asking me if ACE students were going to do anything else, and they asked for sunflowers.”
Each student that participated was given all the supplies needed, including: yellow, orange, and brown paper, stencils, scissors, hot glue and a slideshow of instructions on how to assemble the sunflowers. Positive and memorable messages and quotes were then written inside of them. Together ACE made and delivered over 60 flowers. The production of the flowers was not too difficult for most and was worth it in the end, because as a result ACE students got to brighten the days of individuals going through tough times.
Ciana explained, “Time at the Praxair center was spent talking to the administration about our project ACE Cares and why it is important to us. We also discussed with their team leader Amy, future projects that the ACE students can do to maintain an uplifting environment.”
With this being said ACE is going to continue giving back to organizations because we are a community that strives to give back in numerous ways.
