Welcome!
Join us at our
Charity Factory & Free Academy!
We spread love & hope by teaching how to make critically-needed items for charitable causes.
Our 501(c)3 non-profit teaches the manufacturing to donate over 50 zero-waste clothing, medical, and educational items while creating a 2-way benefit structure for a family of Givers who bring comfort and employment opportunities to the chronically ill and financially disadvantaged in our communities. Non-denominational, non-political, federally tax-deductible, as well as an AZ Qualified Charitable Organization for Tax Credits.
What We Teach
We are a sister and brotherhood who meet regularly to laugh, share life stories, and inspire each other to give hope and create community partnerships through teaching job skills and donating needed medical, educational, and emergency items. We teach marketable job skills from team leadership, to the machine operational skills of sewing, paper arts and silkscreen textile arts in a community space that gathers all denominations, color, gender and political leanings. We donate requested items to medical, government and educational facilities that our students and volunteers have upcycled materials, cut, sewn, made kits, sewn or finished. We also promote donations of sewing machines to schools/long-term care facilities. All designs are a collaboration with local medical and educational staff. Mending Souls is a safe gathering of community members who find purpose through helping others.
ABOUT
Our Free Academy teaches job skills while donating to help others overcome chronic illness and financial instability. Our Charity Factory makes pre-cut kits, and also packages for shipping and delivery to hospitals, schools, aging facilities, police/fire departments and more.
ITEMS
See our 30 categories of over 50 handmade treasures many patients and students (or you!) need. Make it or buy it; every purchase includes a donation given to others less fortunate! With every purchase you allow others in need to have these donated to them too!
JOIN or DONATE
Join one of over 20 Teams! Make a kit, pick up a kit! Be a student, be an instructor, be a Sponsor of critically-needed items in our community! Donate materials or funds to be the hero who is taking care of our communities when illness or tragedies strike.
Our Mission
The global mission of the Mending Souls Charity Factory and Free Academy is to teach job training skills to manufacture and donate over 50 zero-waste clothing, medical, and educational items while creating a two-way benefit structure for Givers and Receivers.
The Givers are community angels who unite as a family to bring comfort and employment opportunities to the Receivers who are those most chronically ill and financially disadvantaged in our communities: in over 139 schools, hospitals, fire/police departments, nursing homes, Veterans homes, homeless/DV shelters, and animal rescues.
Refurbished machines are donated to assisted living facilities and schools. We are a non-political, non-denominational 501(c)3 and AZ Charitable Organization for federal tax deductions and Arizona state tax credits.
To date we’ve made over 250,000 handmade treasures (in 2022 we made over 30,000 items) led by 22 Team Professors & Captains!
Community Testimonials
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When I had my hair, breasts and ovaries removed, your chemo caps and headbands helped more than you know - they told others and myself that I am still a woman...
Leslie P., Cancer patient
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My quilted shawl gave me strength and comfort to stand and see my brothers' names on The Wall...
Dan K., Vietnam Veteran & PTSD Guest Speaker for U.S. Armed Forces
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Thank you for my pretty curtain that covers my urine bag at the dinner table!
R.D., In-home patient
Sample of Items to Make or Request
To the amazing volunteers at Mending Souls,
The minute the nurses took my preemie baby out of my arms and to the NICU, I felt more than helpless. When I was finally able to go visit her after the first few hours, one of the nurses handed me a mommy heart and told me to sleep with it and that from then on they would keep it right on her chest so that she would always have me next to her.
I received two of those hearts and swapped them out religiously for the entire 37 days that she grew bigger and then finally she came home.
I cannot express enough to you all how much that meant to me.
So many things felt out of my control during that time and she couldn’t be home with me so having a little piece of me with her so that she could smell me always meant the world to me.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Melissa P.
We mend others’ souls, as well as our own…
People of all ages and groups come together to create clothing and critically-needed items to promote healing, such as: chemo caps to comfort skin that stings, Mommy Hearts to absorb the birth mother’s fluids to ease the struggling of a newborn in the NICU, Activity Mats to encourage development and rehabilitation of toddlers to those with autism and dementia. The artists, embroiderers, quilters, designers, textile cutters, fundraisers and administrators all work together to donate needed items to various charitable causes. These include individuals facing life-threatening illnesses or disabilities, as well at those going through dire financial difficulties.
We became a family on a united mission to serve others; and in doing so, we gained job training skills to use software and modern computerized machines like air-threading sergers and 10-needles. But most of all, we gained life-long friends by helping out others in our communities! When we all come together to support one another, our cities become one big family.
Become a student or teacher! Become a Sponsor to provide items for others for any charitable cause dear to your heart. Sign up to start a Mending Souls chapter in your club, church, or neighborhood to meet your community’s needs too! ONE person can inspire great change and bring so much joy and comfort to hundreds of thousands in your city…
Organizations we Support
Just a few of our Amazing Heroes we have supported over the years with items like surgical caps, chemo caps and headbands, sensory activity mats, baby care items, dignity purses with toiletries, school supplies in handmade bags, quilts, pillowcases, support pillows, Safety teddy bears, loss-of-family bereavement bags, blankets, PPE, dignity bandanas to protect shirts from saliva and so much more. We are honored to serve those who devote their lives to uplift and heal others….in other words, “Mending Souls”….