MCI Inmates Create Security Blankets for TVN-Mt. Vernon/Knox County

MARION, Ohio - It started with a letter to local churches asking for help with providing quilts for the boys and girls living at The Village Network-Mt. Vernon/Knox County. To date, more than nine handmade quilts have found their way onto the beds at the Children's Resource Center, Mt. Vernon, Ohio and several more await the pleasure. But that's just part of the story!

Twice a month, Christine Bowers and Kathleen Winslow, members of the First Congregational United Church of Christ and the Knox County Quilters Guild, head off to the Marion County Correctional Institute (MCI). Inside a prison training room that subs as the make-shift sewing studio, eight to 10 inmates create some of the most beautiful "security blankets" you will see.

The connection between the letter, the church and the inmates is Randy Canterbury, training officer at MCI.

"I started as a training officer, minding my own business, and now my areas are a sewing workshop," Canterbury said with a smile.

A career correctional officer, Canterbury took the idea of inmates making the quilts to his church and to the Knox County quilters. Now truckloads of material, buttons, batting, sewing machines and other sewing items crowd the storage rooms. The response from the community has been wonderful according to Canterbury.

The Village Network has provided quilts to youth in its residential program at the main campus in Wooster for over 30 years. Many of the alumni still have their quilts and often talk about how much they mean to them. Tracy Neuman, administrative assistant, Development, initiated the letter that expanded the program to include Knox County.

Canterbury's mantra is "planting seeds of opportunity." Each program at MCI affords the inmates an opportunity to learn, be productive and with some, give back to the community. The TVN project brings with it pride and great satisfaction according to Canterbury.