A big thank you to Bella

My name is Bella Heenan and I am a 16 year old student. This all started when one of my school’s teachers decided to set up a group at the beginning of lockdown now known as ‘the sewing collective’ which involved getting people to sew different garments, such as scrubs, scrub caps and laundry bags for the NHS.

I contributed to the group by sewing over 50 scrub caps, scrubs and over 20 laundry bags, with the help of my elderly neighbours. I felt this was important as the elderly have also suffered greatly during lockdown and this gave them the opportunity to become involved in helping the local community. I then decided to set up a face mask business and donate a large proportion of the proceeds to charity. I advertised to friends and family, a lot of whom were very highly motivated to support me due to my chosen charity being such a good cause. I started off by just dropping off face mask packages locally and as demand grew, I received orders from all around the country.

I chose ‘Off the Record’ as the charity to donate to because several of my friends have previously struggled with mental health and I know for a fact that Off the record helped a couple of them enormously. Altogether, I believe it is an incredible organisation that deals with one of the most important issues, especially in today’s current climate. The pandemic has affected so many people and teenagers are a prominent target to mental health issues and I am so grateful that there are people working carefully to tackle these issues.