For many years, Karen Bradley, the owner of Hospital Scrubs manufacturing company,Sassy Scrubs, from Penn Yan, New York, has been making baby quilts to mail to orphans in China. In addition to spending long weekends in her sewing room, she has enlisted seamstresses at her company, Sassy Scrubs, a US manufacturer of custom hospital uniforms, to sew baby blankets in their spare time. Her dedication captured the attention of the State of Colorado’s adoption agency, CCAI, and the governmental officials at China’s CCAA. Karen proudly announces that her Blankets for Babies Project has just been expanded!

In a recent partnership between Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI) and the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA), Karen’s Blankets for Babies Project has been proclaimed as an Official Project by the CCAA! The Mandarin name for her project is “ai xin xiao mian tan” and roughly translates to “Small Blanket of Love”, an appropriate name for her project of the heart. Karen has mailed over 6,000 quilts and blankets to Chinese orphanages to date through her volunteer Blankets for Babies Project and the growth of this project to Official Status will allow her to continue helping the orphaned children of China’s orphanages.

As Volunteer Project Director, Bradley accepted a challenge to send 1,000 baby blankets and homesewn quilts to be received by CCAA by June 1, 2007, which was Children’s Day in China. Karen sewed the baby blankets and quilts, as a volunteer, through her manufacturing company, Sassy Scrubs, and shipped the blankets to the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs to be given to the orphans in time for the Children’s Day holiday, nearly 2,000 of them! The ultimate goal for the project is to provide warm blankets for 10,000 children – quite a challenge!  Bradley plans to continue her Blankets for Babies project until this challenge has been met.