Ju - volunteer quiltmaking

Ju is a mother of 4 from Trim. She is originally from Korea but moved to Trim 6 years ago with her husband and family. She volunteers for Navan Community Development Project where she provides quilt making classes for ladies with intellectual disabilities from Rehabcare.

‘I am originally from South Korea. I met my husband in Canada and we moved to Ireland after we got married. The first few years we were busy raising family and with job commitments. It’s almost 6 years ago since we moved to Trim. So for the last few years I’ve been busy raising kids.  I have four children – my youngest 2 are twins. When the twins were born they were very sick and they were in the hospital from for months. I was obviously very upset about the whole experience. The local ladies made a special quilt for the people whose kids were in the nicu and it was the quilt of hope. I thought that it was lovely that the little tiny quilt of hope could bring so much into somebodies life. And that’s when i started to think of the quilt as part of sharing.

My kids are now all in school so coming up to this September i thought that now I have a little more time to do something for myself and give back to the community. I wasn’t really sure what I could do so I got on the internet and saw Meath Volunteer Centre. I went and had a chat with them. I am a qualified physiotherapist and I knew that I wanted to use these skills and maybe

with my own experience nad own knowledge i want to go back to a little bit of community commitment and wanted to see what i can do. I looked up the internet and saw Meath volunteer and wanted to get invoved with something from my own background and experience.

When kids were younger I started going to quilting classes with a lovely lady in trim. My professional background is that i studied occupational therapy but ive never got to practice in Ireland. I saw that there were millions of opportunities but i wanted to use my knowledge and experience as part of my volunteers so i loved quilting and i have knowledge of disable people.

There are 5 ladies involved in quilting with me at the minute and they all have different abilities and different level. When we first came up here i did not know any individuals. So the first thing i had to do was get to know eachother. Some people were more passive than others nad felt they were dragged into the group. Thought it was impolite to say know. They wanted to bring in someihing else but i said no we are going to sew. So as the weeks go by with plenty of encouragement. Some of them are a little bit softer than the others. Instead of me walking in and showing them what to they they are helping eachother. Some of them have a better eye hand coordination, or some are better at stitching and some are better and putting the thread through the needle. When some of them find wouldn’t be able to hold it properly and at the same time some would have 3 or 4 block done while others are on their first block. The idea is that we all sit there and talk together and get to know eachotehr. I assumed they knew eachother very well but they did not. And there are different personalities, some of them just sit there and listen, one girl just listens to the others. Some of them share their stories. Collette is a great player at bingo and she always tells how she goes and wins at bingo. She’s also started to open up more about her personal circumstances – about how she likes this and how she doesn’t like that. I think people start to open up a little bit.

I’ve never asked anyone to help the others they just volunteer. They are just proactive towards helping each other which i didn’t see at the start.