Team Tara shifts gears, embraces ‘Spring of Hope’

Christine Lavoie and her colleagues at the Tufts Floating Hospital for Children NICU are grateful for the donations from Team Tara and its supporters.

Justin Luk was at home with his family observing the shelter in place advisory due to COVID-19, when his phone lit up on a Sunday evening with a call from Tara Shuman. “She called me and asked me if I was interested in doing something useful with the 3-D printer from the library,” he said. Luk, a senior at Canton High School who is interested in studying engineering and biology in college, was definitely interested.

At 7:00 the following morning, Library Director Andrea Capone opened the building for Shuman, allowing her to pick up the printer and take it to Luk’s home, where she left it in the driveway. Once it was wiped down and carried inside, Luk began experimenting with designing and producing face shields for the health care workers who are caring for COVID-19 patients.

Shuman and her good friend Amy Killeen are the co-captains of a Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk Team called Team Tara. The walk is usually held in September; this year it has been rescheduled for October. Over the past six years, the two have grown the team into the walk’s largest in terms of both members and fundraising dollars, having collected over $1,016,000 for cancer patients and research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In 2020, they planned to donate the monies that they raised from the Jimmy Fund Walk to fund the research of Dr. Kimmie Ng, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, the founder and director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Center at Dana-Farber, and director of clinical and biospecimen research in the Center for Gastrointestinal Oncology at Dana-Farber.

Team Tara’s two biggest annual fundraisers are the Evening of Hope and a yard sale, both of which are held in the spring. But this year’s circumstances forced them to cancel their fundraising events. “We made that call very early,” Shuman said. “It was just really disappointing.”

They said that they allowed themselves to feel bad about the impact of the virus on their annual fundraising efforts before regrouping and contacting Dr. Ng to see what she needed. Her answer was personal protective equipment (PPE).

“We needed to kind of switch gears,” Killeen said, “to support health care professionals.” They set up a Zoom meeting for a Saturday and found 50 people eager to help with the project. The number has since increased to about 250 people, just one of the many numbers that change constantly with the group that is now called Team Tara and Friends and focuses on supplying sewn masks and face shields to nurses, doctors and other professionals working in hospitals and caring for patients.

Shuman and Killeen initially thought that they would have volunteers sewing masks for a few weeks, but as the number of people exposed to or infected by the virus changed, so too did the direction of their work. “It’s just evolving every day,” Shuman said. “We’re learning something new every day. We’re meeting new people every day. It’s a ton of work.”

Which is where Luk comes in. A member of the CHS robotics team, he had time on his hands when the school closed in mid-March. The arrival of the 3-D printer gave him a new focus. There was a large amount of filament paper with the printer and he began to use that as he worked on making face shields. Initially he and other CHS students created the headpieces for the face masks using a design by a Czech 3D printing company called Prusa. The design had been verified by the Czech Ministry of Health. After producing about 50 units of the Czech design, Luk said that the students began to produce a different but equally safe design which simplified the assembly process.

Justin Luk has been using the library’s 3D printer to make components for face masks.

Luk and other Robodogs joined two other groups of people working on face shields. The team’s advisor and CHS teacher Katie Healy is working with her students and their group; Blue Hills Regional Technical School teacher Manny Cerqueira is working with a second group of volunteers; and Canton residents Ed and Loraine Jackson Riemer are working together. Tom Birmingham, Killeen’s husband, is supporting the members of all three groups in the role of project manager.

“It’s just been really nice to see those communities come together,” Killeen said. “That really sends a powerful message. It’s a great partnership.”

Groups who are producing face shields is just one part of what the team is doing. “We kind of have little mini-teams,” Shuman said. “Face shield teams, sewing teams, drivers, people who drive things from here to there within 10 minutes.”

San Lee teaches sewing classes in Canton and many of her students are sewing face masks. Volunteers are reaching out to others in order to find materials, such as elastic bands for face shields or masks, then picking up materials left on one front porch and driving them to the front porch of a member of a different team. Dream Smile Dental of Canton donated extra PPE they had, giving a combination of 600 extra masks, gloves, gowns, and other materials to the team. The items were picked up and delivered to local hospitals within 24 hours. Canton resident Amy Ennis, who walks in the Jimmy Fund Walk with her team Bushy Strong, is doing research for Team Tara and Friends.

Joan MacIsaac is Killeen’s neighbor, a fellow Team Tara member, and owner of Effie’s Homemade. When she approached Killeen about how she could help, Birmingham suggested a partnership with MacIsaac’s product so that the treats could be sent with the protective equipment. “They donated 15 cases,” Killeen said, “bringing hope to health care workers.”

Killeen and Shuman are calling this solution to the effect of COVID-19 on their original plan “The Spring of Hope.” As of April 17, 2,000 masks had been delivered to health care workers with requests for another 700 yet to be filled.

“It’s really been so nice to bring people together, to give people a tangible way to connect,” Killeen said.

“Having hope,” said Shuman. “You can have a little thing to do so that the world is a little better that day. That’s what it means.”

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Apr 24 2020. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.