Consisting of Sofía Guiot, a ninth-grade student at The John Cooper School; Diego Guiot, a sixth-grade student at The John Cooper School; Emiliano Plaza, an 11th-grade student at The John Cooper School; Sebastián Plaza, an 11th-grade student at The John Cooper School; Laura Plaza Grisanty, a graduate student at Boston University; and Santiago Plaza, a student at Fordham University, the group assembled their donation within five days after researching who needed the supplies, including the fire department and Montgomery County Hospital District.
"There's obviously a huge shortage of masks nationwide, and we felt we had to do something about it," Sofía said. "We decided to give it to the fire department; they were the best outlet we could find that could distribute the masks across our community and we have a special bond with them from when they helped us four years ago."
Diego said the group has been working constantly to make the masks, and due to the number of people helping, they were able to assemble them quickly. The group hopes to inspire others to help make additional masks and continue donating to groups that are in need.
"We want to help the community and help the heroes who are working day and night," Sofía said.
Diego said the group also wants to show that making the masks is not hard to do and it can be done comfortably from home.
"It's like a snowball effect," he said. "Once you make them, your friends are like, 'Oh, that's really nice, I can probably do the same thing.'"
Along with the fire department donation, the students donated an additional 250 masks to the hospital district April 10. Moving forward, they plan to continue making additional masks at a rate of around 500 per week.
