Written by Ilona V Idlis, University of WA
Moses Lake Medical Team delivers 730 bras to Nigerian women on mission to Kwara State
Christy Ball, 36, from Kennewick, will open her heart to you in less than 10 minutes. She shares her life’s story with ease and candor, gushes about her four children and chokes up over the misfortunes of strangers in another hemisphere.
She’s the type to “go into a gas station, start talking with some stranger and become friends with him right on the spot,” her eldest daughter, Brittney Ball, explained.
Bursting with contagious optimism, Christy wanted to better the world, and that would be cliché if her sincerity wasn’t so palpable.
Yet staying positive during the last two years has been a challenge. A car accident, chronic pain and a bad relationship had left Christy single, unemployed and lost. Unable to return to work and plagued by neck injuries from the accident, Christy was losing faith in her ability to do much of anything.
“I was really in a slump,” she said, “feeling really down, kind of hopeless.”
But that changed when her daughter Brittney got involved with a public service project at the University of Washington, launching her mother into fundraising super-stardom and captivating the Tri-Cities.
Brittney, a first year student, decided to join a drive to collect gently used bras for women in Nigeria. The campus group behind it, STAND, works on genocide prevention and diverse aid projects. “Support the Ta-ta’s” was their two-week effort to collect bras that the Moses Lake Medical Team would deliver during its annual mission to Kwara State. After returning from last year’s trip, a mission member had voiced the need for bras and students rallied around the cause. They wanted to share their everyday comfort and convenience with women across the globe.
Brittney asked her mom to look for unused undergarments in her closet. Christy did her one better.
She collected 730 bras – it could have been more – in a week.
After Brittney’s call, Christy contacted her family and friends, and badgered her Facebook network. The response was encouraging.
“I could do more,” she thought.
She wrote the Tri-City Herald, asking its readers to donate bras and offering her home phone as a contact. The small blurb was published on Oct. 14, a Friday.
The response blew everyone away.
“My phone didn’t stop ringing that day,” she recalls. “I was barely keeping up with the voicemails.”
Foregoing caution, Christy gave out her address and asked callers to drop the donations off at her home.
“That really worked. Every single time I came home, from wherever I went, there was a bag on my door.”
Herald readers reacted quickly. Beth Phillips collected 76 bras in 48 hours and became friends with Christy in the process.
“She’s a very warm, open person,” Beth said. “You feel like you’ve known her her whole life.”
Local organizations pledged to help, too. The ladies of Smucker Fruit Processing in Grandview kept the fundraiser a secret from their male coworkers. They giggled and gave generously, donating 50 bras by Tuesday.
The women of the Benton Franklin Health District had been looking for a way to build team spirit so they turned the bra drive into a friendly competition between departments. They made donation bins and a “Ta-ta Tree,” promising a “Booby Prize” to the winning team.
“We really got into it,” coordinator Kathy Story said. “Everyone would go check to see how many were in [the container] each day… It was just a lot of fun for a good cause.”
Four days later, they mailed off 64 bras to the drive.
The bras stacked up in Christy’s hallways. Many came with a story. Often, people donated the legacies of deceased loved ones. One man had lost his wife to breast cancer just a mere month earlier. One woman tearfully parted with 12 of her daughter’s bras—she, too, had died of breast cancer.
One story, in particular, stuck with Christy. An elderly man had lost his wife three years ago, yet all of her belongings still sat untouched in her closet. He couldn’t bear to part with them. The drive motivated him to give her things a better purpose. He sent her bras to Nigerian women and, at Christy’s suggestion, donated the rest of her clothes to domestic violence shelters.
“When you give to other people, it opens your heart to have healing in other areas,” Beth explained. “He was able to get closure through that.”
When donors couldn’t come to her, Christy came to them. When she visited Rosie, a lonely, wheelchair-bound elderly woman, Christy made another unexpected connection.
Rosie “just lit up” when Christy popped through her door. They had a good conversation and Christy hugged her on the way out. Rosie’s eyes watered.
“I really needed a hug,” she said.
Teary herself, Christy promised to visit again.
“It really felt good to brighten her whole day,” she remembers.
At home, Christy gradually counted up the heaps of donations with the help of her 8-year-old. By Monday, Oct. 24, the total exceeded 700. In little more than a week, the Tri-Cities surpassed UW’s donation total threefold.
“I was dumbstruck,” STAND coordinator, Andrea Carey, said with a laugh. “All of a sudden the bra drive had expanded to close to a thousand, so that was really exciting.”
This outpouring of kindness and generosity was more than Christy ever expected. Over and over she heard, “I’ve been waiting for something like this.”
“People want to be involved,” she concluded.
Yet perhaps most inspired was Christy herself.
“This thing gave me a lot of hope for myself, like OK, I can really do something.”
Now, she’s determined to keep the momentum going. Together with Beth, Christy is brainstorming ways to collect more items for the Moses Lake Medical Team and its missions. Eyeglasses are up next.
“All this just lit a fire in me,” she said. “Thinking small doesn’t change the world.”
