Portland Rotary - Honors Local Woman

PORTLAND, MAINE (January 20, 2017) — With temperatures drastically dropping across Maine, many low-income families and children are in dire need of hats, gloves, and coats to protect them from the bitter cold.

One Portland woman has taken up her knitting needles to help meet this need for the children of Lyseth Elementary School. Through a collaboration with the Rotary Club of Portland, Joan Steinberg knit more than 100 pairs of mittens for the school, with yarn donated by Rotarians.

Steinberg has been knitting mittens for the past eight years to donate to local children. She has knit about 900 pairs of mittens in total over the course of eight years. She averages more than 100 pairs per year, and takes four hours to knit each pair. If you calculate her total hours knitting using the 40-hour work week structure, she has dedicated nearly two years to knitting mittens.

In honor of her work, the Rotary Club of Portland presented Steinberg with the Paul Harris Fellow Award on December 17^th, 2016 to commemorate her generosity and annual effort to furnish mittens to children in need, helping to set up donations, and relaying Rotary’s mission and message to the public.