Blankets came in from all over thanks to a drive put on by the student nursing association at Ohio University Zanesville. The association set up a campus-wide multi-class competition to see who could bring in the most blankets in partnership with the annual Good Samaritan Blanket Drive.
The students gathered together in the OSU Zanesville lobby on Tuesday, December 6th to coordinate the donation of what became over 250 blankets with a generous donation of over 50 thermal blankets presented by Chad Seastrand who is the general manager of Zanesville’s own Economy Linen, and an OSU Zanesville Alumni.
The blankets were taken by volunteers and students to the Eastside Community Ministry to be given out from there. The Eastside Executive Director Jamie Trout stated that the blanket donation was just in time to resupply them after the last of their blankets had been recently given out.
Carol Kohler, a Good Samaritan Nursing School graduate said that the help from OSU Zanesville was desperately needed. “When the OSU Zanesville nursing director contacted me a few years ago and asked if they could help, I said that would be great because Good Samaritan hasn’t had a nursing student graduate since 1975 and we’re not going to be around that long, but we hope that our name and these students I hope that they take this over out here for years to come,” stated Kohler.
“See even with the nursing for us, our nursing, we know that not only do we have those patients, but that outreach that we have to do. Our mission is to serve others, to help others, how can we reach that community, and by all of these students serving, it’s just serving the community,” commented Teresa Polen the assistant professor of nursing at OSU Zanesville.
