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Blankets Lend Warmth, Hope: HPHS Students Host Drive for Women's Shelter

Park Cities People - November 5, 2010 - Blankets. Whether they're strewn across the back of a couch or jammed into a trunk, most households seem to have more of them than they know what to do with.

For the clients of Genesis Women's Shelter, however, those cast-aside blankets could mean the difference between a cold night and a bright tomorrow.

Students at Highland Park High School collected blankets and donated them to the Dallas shelter last week in a show of support for the women of the shelter, said HPHS Student Council adviser John Hinton. And while the Scots were battling Rockwall-Heath on the football field Friday night, the two schools were also battling in a blanket drive, he said.

Rockwall-Heath evened the score following the Scots' gridiron victory, collecting 740 blankets to HPHS's 310.

Throughout the week, members of HPHS's Student Council and National Honor Society collected blankets from their homes and local businesses, while advertising the drive on the morning announcements and through e-mail blasts. And while the inter-school blanket battle was fun, the students still realized how important their work was.

"I feel like it helps people who need it the most," said HP senior Ally Wagner, 17. "Sometimes these women have nothing when they leave their homes."

Genesis Women's Shelter helps battered women and their children through crisis intervention, with the goal of reducing the occurrence of violence against women and children throughout Dallas. The HP and Rockwall-Heath students were participating in the seventh annual Share the Warmth Blanket Drive, coordinated by Sleep Experts. In addition to the school drives, donors can drop off new or gently used blankets at any of the 34 Sleep Experts stores.

"We're sharing not only physical warmth but emotional warmth with women and children who left abusive situations and left everything behind," said University Park resident Jan Langbein, executive director of Genesis. The message is especially important for the teenagers collecting the blankets, she said. Even if it doesn't click now, she said, maybe next year in college or down the road a woman will recognize an abusive situation, and report it.

"This is where it starts," Langbein said. "This has nothing to do with your ZIP code, or your skin color. And Rockwall-Heath and the Scots have come together and said "There's something bigger than the score on the football field."

- by Bradford Pearson