Golden Valley Nonprofit Prepares for Large Annual ‘Scarf Bomb’
One Good Deed, a Golden Valley nonprofit, is preparing to help hundreds in need warm up.
Every late December, founder Michelle Christensen fills her Golden Valley garage with bags of winter warmth.
“This bag is a little bit of everything. There’s some jackets, there’s some shirts, there’s some mittens. Some of these will have boots in it,” Christensen said, going through one of the large bags.
Her garage only holds a fraction of the collection of warm items. All of those are poised to be sorted.
“We take them into the house. We take them, we dump them on the floor and we sort everything into hats, scarves, gloves, boots,” Christensen listed.
All of this is for One Good Deed’s eighth annual “scarf bomb.” In this annual event, she and a large group of volunteers collect and then distribute pounds upon pounds of warm winter clothing for people without consistent shelter.
A bench from a 2020 scarf bombing event.
Humble Beginnings
Eight years ago, Christensen put out a call to neighbors asking if they had any extra items to donate to shelters. People responded in droves, and Christensen quickly realized she had a movement on her hands.
“It was too much to give to shelters,” Christensen said. “I figured we should put it out where the unsheltered really are.”
Once the items are collected, the group goes out into parks in Minneapolis and St. Paul to distribute. They cover the parks in warm clothing, bags of essentials and things like tents.
Every item bears a tag with a message ‘take me, I’m yours.’
“If given the opportunity, people with be kind, and they will step up just to be part of it,” Christensen said.
Volunteers bring in a van full of donations from the LDS church.
Stepping Up To Help
All of the donations come from anyone in the community. Earlier this week, Christensen got a big load of donations from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
“People want to help, they just don’t know the way to help,” said Faye Hawes, a church member who coordinated the donation. “It was good.”
Hawes is a member of the LDS Crystal ward. Three wards came together to donate the van filled with warm clothes. That’s a small fraction of something big– Christensen hopes to have 500 bagfuls collected by the distribution day.
“People have extra things. This is a good place to give it,” Hawes said.
It all ties back to a goal that started small, but became big. Christensen said it was something that sparked eight years back at the first scarf bombing event. She said everyone was gathering afterwards, looking to do something else.
“Somebody in the back of the yard said ‘What are you going to do next?'” Christensen said. “And I said, ‘If I do more, will you help me?’ and they said ‘Yes.'”
The “scarf bomb” takes place the first Sunday of January. If you’d like to donate next year, One Good Deed begins accepting donations in October.
More details about One Good Deed and its monthly good deeds are available on its website and Facebook page.
