Pascha Griffiths: Founder of Beloved Quilts

Belmont Patch's Friday feature, "Meet Your Neighbors," is just that – discovering more about fellow residents or people who work in town and make the community a nice place to live.

Who?

Pascha Griffiths of Belmont

What?

Founder of Possibilities Factory and Beloved Quilts

Her story:

Pascha Griffiths is profoundly spiritual but it’s rare that she hears God’s voice.

Yet she did – clear as a bell – a few years ago when she was pregnant with her second son and looking for guidance on how to keep up with her community service endeavors.

“I was in my kitchen, cleaning it and eating Tortilla chips,” said the Belmont resident who, a decade ago, founded Possibilities Factory Inc. It’s a non-profit organization she’s put a lot of heart and soul into that aims to empower youth through the process of improving their communities by way of community service camps, after-school programs and teacher-training programs.

“I knew I wanted to focus on my children and might need to take a break from my work with Possibilities Factory,” Griffiths said, explaining that the hundreds of hours she was used to spending may have worked while caring for an infant but would not be possible once her with a second child was born.

“I was talking to God, realizing I couldn’t do both, and asking how I could come to terms with sacrificing my non-profit work,” she said. “Suddenly, I had a rare moment and heard the voice of God speaking to me.”

God said to her: “Stop eating Tortilla chips.”

She briefly thought of finishing at least the few left in her mouth but, on second thought, decided to go to the waste basket and spit them out. She missed it, however, and instead the mouthful of chips ended up on the floor.

When Griffiths got a roll of paper towels out of her supply cabinet to clean up the mess, she noticed the package had an emblem on it that stated “Big Quilts.”

Immediately, she felt a zing in her body.

“It was like holy lightning,” Griffiths said. “I felt all this joy and started laughing because I completely understood that God wanted me to make quilts for the homeless.”

Beloved Quilts is born

So she started right in on the new project, writing a grant that she submitted to the Somerville Arts Council from which she received $1,000 for seed money. In addition, Malden Mills donated enough fleece to back 100 quilts.

Soon after, Griffiths started a women’s retreat center at her church, Greater Boston Vineyard Church in Cambridge, where a group came to make center squares as an activity.

She also publicized a big “sew-in” at the church where 50 people took the center squares and built them into quilts.

“For all of 2007, I met with a  group twice a month, all day, for quilting,” Griffiths said. “In December 2007, we had a big gala at the church where every single space – the sanctuary, chapel and entryway – had between 60 and 80 quilts hanging and we raised $4,500.”

From those proceeds, Beloved Quilts gave $1,500 and some 60 quits to the Somerville Homeless Coalition; $1,500 and quilts to the Elizabeth Stone House; and $1,500 and quilts to Starlight Ministries.

The only rules of Beloved Quilts is that they have to be given to someone who has been displaced by violence and other tragedies; and each quilt has the word “Beloved” on it even if written in another language.

The quilts have been sent to organizations all over the country as well as for children who have been rescued from human trafficking in Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Beloved Quilts became a well-known organization in 2009 when author Catherine Bell wrote about it in a chapter of her book titled “Quilting For Peace.”

Soon after, people from around the world contacted Griffiths and Beloved Quilts now has branches in California, Maine, Pennsylvania, Canada, Tennessee and Hawaii.

Ideas came from teaching experience

Before Griffiths even thought about Beloved Quilts or Possibilities Factory Inc., she was living in California and teaching leadership skills and science to eighth graders in a public school.

“I started noticing the children were strongly influenced by the television shows they watched,” she said. “I found it frustrating and not helpful for their safety or leadership qualities.”

So she decided to have a “challenge” every Friday where the students had to think deeply about community service projects.

One day, Griffiths learned the house where one of the students at the school was living burned down and the family did not have insurance.

“That week the challenge I gave my students was ‘You have two weeks to do something: Ready, set, go.’”

Using the curriculum in her leadership class, Griffiths’ students split into teams and all decided they wanted to put on a disco dance as a fundraiser. The eighth graders found well-known DJs for the dance as well as a popular pizza shop to donate pizza and then sold it at the event and held a raffle with items donated by local shops in the town.

“They raised just shy of $3,000 and the students received media attention for their efforts,” Griffiths said. “Other kids started coming up to me and asking what they could do to help. I realized this is what I wanted to be on television for children to watch.”

Griffiths then decided to study television production and enrolled in a program at Boston University where she received a master’s degree. Currently, she is applying for her doctorate degree in education at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

After graduation from BU, Griffiths created a pilot show about youth making their own community service projects and, soon after, started Possibilities Factory Inc.

Today, she works for both organizations and is often asked to speak in front of various groups in schools, birthday parties and houses of worship on how people can create their own community service projects.

Anyone is invited to view the quilts on display at the Greater Boston Vineyard Church, 170 Rindge Ave., Cambridge, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sundays. They are not for sale but people can sponsor them by donating the cost of materials.

For additional information, visit www.beloved