Grace Potter Live!
Tonight we’re inviting our partners and extended Masks4Missions family to join us at a special Grace Potter concert at Higher Ground Drive-In. As a native Vermonter and GIV alum, Grace Potter has graciously partnered with us to celebrate mask use, with a percentage of the proceeds going to the Governor’s Institute of Vermont (GIV), a core partner of Masks4Missions. Tonight’s preshow will feature Governor Phil Scott’s PSA on masks, founder Doug Altshuler, and a video reel of the outstanding work our partners have been doing across Vermont. If you haven’t yet purchased your ticket, please do so and join us in our culminating Vermont Mask Week event!
Shoutout to the educators and the students
There’s been a huge outpour of support for Vermont Mask Week, and we are so thankful to all of you for your participation and enthusiasm around this new initiative! I wanted to write a special post to shout out all the educators and students who have taken it upon themselves to host and promote their own Mask Week events. In addition to Middlebury College, we had exciting mask-making events at Champlain College (with their beloved mascot Chauncey the Beaver¬), UVM, NVU-Lyndon, NVU-Johnson, and Vermont Law School. A few campuses even added special mask-themed twists to existing events! NVU-Lyndon hosted a mask-themed Trivia Night with questions about masks and the coronavirus, and will have a DIY-mask design table at their Friday Paint Night event. High schools all over the state have also hosted DIY-mask making events with the help of our fantastic team of student Social Media Ambassadors and dedicated high school nurses. Thank you for helping keep our schools safe and open this fall!
Happy Vermont Mask Day!
Happy Inaugural Mask Day, Vermont! Governor Phil Scott gave a powerful speech today on the impact of masks in keeping Vermont COVID-19 transmission rates and cases low, and it energized our team throughout today. We heard and saw amazing celebrations happening through photos shared on our Instagram and Facebook and personal messages from partners pumped by the turnout at their Mask Day events! Middlebury President Laurie Patton took a masked selfie at Middlebury’s huge campus event, where students posed with their Vermont Mask Day masks or with their newly-designed DIY masks. Other Addison County events included mask distributions at the Addison Central Teen Center and the Addison County Parent Child Center. Many more campuses had fun creative Mask Day events, and I’ll share more tomorrow. It’s been a tiring yet awe-inspiring day.
And we’re off!
Today I gave my first press conference on behalf of Masks4Missions. It was exciting and super positive, and I think the nerves I felt were only natural in representing a greater movement across the nation for masks and public safety! There was a huge amount of support from the press on the ground to our followers on our social media platforms to our amazing partners across the Vermont. Thank you all for empowering me and empowering Masks4Missions to move ahead with this ambitious goal of getting more masks out to the community as a way to foster connection and to raise awareness and support for our local nonprofits. Check out some of the articles that stemmed from today’s press conference on our Vermont Mask Day page.
An Exclusive: Vermont Mask Week previewed
This week we’ve got an exclusive for our readers – a preview of the Vermont Mask Week celebration! Next Monday we will launch with a special press conference, with invitations sent to all our local news stations. The momentum will carry into Tuesday, the official state-designed Vermont Mask Day, where Governor Phil Scott will be speaking at his press conference while celebrations are held simultaneously across high school and college campuses. Our stellar high school Social Media Ambassadors and college partners will be spreading the message of mask-wearing while also distributing Vermont Mask Day masks and hosting DIY mask “make and take” activity tables. On Wednesday we’ll be hosting a free public medical webinar with Dr. Tim Leahy to cover all, or most, of your questions about COVID-19 and masks. Throughout the week we’ll be asking partners and you (yes, you!) to promote masks and community to #KeepVtSafe in a social media contest, and winners will be announced at the preshow before Friday’s Grace Potter concert. Stay tuned for more details!
Welcome, Vermont Foodbank!
With Vermont Mask Day less than a month away, we are extremely excited to announce our partnership with Vermont Foodbank! I cannot describe how blown away I am by the work that Vermont Foodbank’s dedicated staff and volunteers (5,000 strong!) have been doing since March. They are on the ground addressing the very real food insecurity issues exacerbated by this pandemic. We feel fortunate to be able to support Vermont Foodbank with supplying their staff, volunteers, and constituents with free Vermont Mask Day masks across their 300 sites in all 14 Vermont counties. It’s a small part that we can play to take care of our community, and we’re eager to get the ball rolling!
Beginnings
What an exciting first week on the job! As Phil, Trevor, Kelsey, and I (Cassandra) have been onboarded to the project, things have moved at a whirlwind pace.
Some headlines:
We’ve developed six supply chains to produce our branded masks, including some manufacturers in Vermont.
Phil has started building a website for Masks4Missions, loaded with signature Vermont tie-dye branding. We hope it’ll be live by next week, so stay tuned!
Doug has been pitching Masks4Missions and its mission to ever more partners. We’ve now got more than a dozen partners signed onto the project, with more joining by the day.
Most significantly, we’ve begun working with the Vermont State Legislature on our newest (and biggest) initiative yet: Vermont Mask Day.
Team, Advisory Board… Assemble!
The Masks4Missions family is growing in two dimensions!
First, I’m pleased to welcome Cassandra Ling, Phil Cooke, Trevor Nuckols, and Kelsey Parenteau to the core team of Masks4Missions. You’ll hear more from each of them in future blog posts, so keep an eye out!
At the same time, Masks4Missions has launched an advisory board made up of seasoned leaders from Vermont nonprofits of every stripe.