Glenwood Volunteers Chase 911 Kits for Pediatric Patients

Glenwood Springs —The wind off the Roaring Fork River cuts through the parking lot at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs, a reminder that September is already here. It’s a crisp morning, the kind that makes you pull your jacket tighter before heading inside for a shift. Inside, the air is different. It’s warm, busy, and smells faintly of glue and paper as hands move quickly to stuff small craft bags.

Ninety-one hundred activity kits. That is the number High Country Volunteers is chasing for this year’s National Day of Service on September 11.

The math is straightforward, if the logistics are a bit tight. The nonprofit expects to need over 100 volunteers to meet that target. Each volunteer works a two-hour shift at the campus. If you do the arithmetic, 100 people working two hours each yields roughly 200 labor-hours. To assemble 911 kits, that means every single volunteer needs to produce nearly five bags per hour. It’s a fast pace for what is, on paper, a craft assembly line.

Mary Moon, the Executive Director of High Country Volunteers, is betting on community momentum to make those numbers work. She told the Post Independent that the group is hosting the event to bring volunteers together on a single day so they can serve together. The kits, known as Project Sunshine packets, are created by a national nonprofit. They contain a craft activity, a journal, stickers, and other items designed to brighten the days of pediatric patients in regional hospitals.

Moon said the organization is "super excited" about the effort. The goal isn’t just to fill a room with people; it’s to send 911 bags out into the world. The number is symbolic, nodding to the date and the scale of the remembrance.

This marks the second time High Country Volunteers has participated in the National Day of Service, a designation Congress established in 2009. The day is led nationally by AmeriCorps and 911day.org, a nonprofit that has coordinated the observation for over a decade. For locals, it’s less about the national history and more about the immediate impact on neighbors who are sick.

Moon noted in a release that September 11 is a day of history that causes reflection, but it also offers an opportunity to join neighbors in acts of service. She emphasized that as the community marks the 25th anniversary, it is important to remember that people are stronger when they unite in kindness.

Registration is open on the High Country Volunteers website. The organization maintains a database of over 100 local community organizations for those looking to get involved beyond this specific event.

For context, the cost here is time, not money. You’re trading two hours of your Saturday for a bag that might sit on a hospital bedside in Glenwood Springs, Aspen, or Montrose. The project doesn’t add square footage to the valley’s housing inventory, nor does it change property tax rates. It changes a Tuesday afternoon in a pediatric ward somewhere down the highway.

The practical bottom line is simple: if you want to help hit that 911-kit goal, you have to sign up. The volunteers are the only variable in this equation. One hundred people show up, and 911 bags get mailed. Fewer than that, and the symbolic number falls short of the physical reality. The kits are ready to be filled; they just need hands.