Sanah Sayani has had a varied and interesting professional life. She was born in Kinshasa, Zaire, and her family later moved to Montreal, and then to Atlanta. She has had a varied and interesting professional life, from journalism and media production, to most recently obtaining a degree as a Master Cosmetologist and opening up a beauty spa. However, when COVID-19 hit,” Sanah says, “I stopped threading eyebrows, and starte threading needles.”
Sanah understood that masks could prevent the spread of COVID-19, but she also realized that there was a shortage of masks, even for healthcare workers on the frontlines. She researched tutorials on YouTube, joined some sewing groups on Facebook, researched various fabrics, and tried out a number of mask patterns before settling on the pattern that seemed to be the easiest. With no sewing skills of her own, she reached out to her mom, Shaahin Sayani, to make fabric masks for friends and family.
The mother-daughter pair had a lot of free time on their hands due to the COVID-19 shutdown and they decided to expand. In March, 2020, Sanah started the group Tucker Makes Masks, with the goal of providing a free mask to anyone who needed one.
Through social media Sanah advertised her fabric masks and received her first order: 25 masks for a local hospital. Word spread and she converted her beauty spa into a sewing studio, naming it after the city of Tucker, Georgia, where her business is located. Community volunteers offered their help on-site and from home, and monetary donations poured in for the purchase of supplies, resulting in a mask-making assembly line.
More than 50 individuals from a variety of races and religions have helped contribute towards this effort. Sanah created and shared this mask-making video to help her volunteers.
Betty Fields and her eight and eleven-year old granddaughters joined forces with Tucker Makes Masks. Betty was looking for a way to help healthcare workers who needed protective gear. She says: “I was not sure of how I could get masks to them. I searched online to find out how to make masks and I stumbled across Tucker Makes Masks. I read that they donate free masks to healthcare workers and first responders, with a mission to help ease the pain of limited supplies. I knew then that they have the same compassion and humanity that I have, so I immediately joined their group.”
Betty says that she and her granddaughters “get great joy out of making masks to help others. This is the least that we can do to show our love and gratitude to the workers for their sacrifices.”
By the end of April, Tucker Makes Masks had stitched over 10,000 free fabric masks, which have been shipped across the US and even overseas. “The first 10,000 masks were donated to anyone who wanted one,” says Sanah, and “Now anyone with a healthcare/first responder ID can come and pick up a mask for free.” These masks have reached healthcare workers, first responders, members of the Navajo Nation, and low-income seniors.
Sanah plans to keep her spa closed and continue mask making for the time being. She says, “It is too risky to reopen. I cannot put the lives of my clients or my staff or my family at risk.” She continues to look for large groups who need these masks and says, “The mission of the group will keep changing as the needs of society change.”
She has advice for the Jamat: “This pandemic has changed us. In such a short time, we’ve experienced so many highs and lows. No matter what happens, we’re learning a lot about each other. And right now we need each other more than anything. It’s important to lend a helping hand, make a phone call to that friend you’ve been meaning to call back, bake a cake with your kids, find the silver lining. This pandemic has made me understand that Life is not one-size-fits-all. We need to stop judging and start understanding and helping. Help find solutions that help everyone and not just yourself. None of us asked for this but we are all in this together.”
