You’ve undoubtedly seen the flower badges that many of the faculty, staff and administration sport to display their IDs, and you may have even seen them for sale at PPMC events. But what you may not know is that efforts to make the flowers badges are led by just two PPMC PACU nurses, Andrea Kwon-Murphy and Denise Alabado.
Alabado first spotted the flower badges at a Temple fundraiser around Christmas 2010, and volunteered to help sell the badges at Presby. After selling out her supply, Alabado says she continued to get requests for more badges. “People saw their colleagues wearing them and would come to me asking where they could get one. I had so many requests, so I thought it would be a great way to raise a little money and do something for charity if we started making and selling them ourselves,” she says. Knowing that her colleague had some crafting talent, Alabado recruited Kwon-Murphy to help with the project. Now, with help from the PACU staff and other PPMC volunteers who sell the badges at bake sales and other events for just $5 each, the project has so far benefited three local charities.
“We pick a local charity, and when we’ve reached our fundraising goal from sales of the flower badges, we either host or attend an event to present our donation,” explains Kwon-Murphy. “We just wanted to do something for charity, and since the badges cost almost no money or time to make, we thought this was a great way to help the community.”
Flower badges are made from the caps off medicine bottles, most of which are donated from PPMC’s Pharmacy department. Adding just a little glue and a few pieces of fl are, Kwon-Murphy (who leads the crafting efforts) says each badge takes no more than ten minutes to make.
Sales of flower badges have already provided nearly $3,000 in donations to three local charities. Current sales are being collected for a donation to Aid for Friends, a local non-profit organization that helps the needy and elderly in the Greater Philadelphia area. Kwon-Murphy and Alabado hope to conduct a canned food drive in the near future so non-perishable food items can be donated along with the monetary contribution.
“We always try to volunteer or host an event for the charity when we give our donation. For two of our previous charities, we hosted a brunch, and helped serve dinner to patients. For Aid for Friends, we’d really like to help make meals when we give our donation, and we thought it would be great if we could bring some canned food items as well to help with their shortage,” said Alabado.
So far, Kwon-Murphy and Alabado have raised $1000 for Aid for Friends and hope to make their donation in September. To donate canned food items, or to purchase a flower badge, please call or visit the PACU staff, 2 Cupp, extension 8243.
