Project to make scarves for Iraqis clicks 'like wildfire'

The click-clacking can be heard in halls of Brighton High School, the living room of her home and the Relief Society room at her church building.

Everywhere she goes, Jan Moncur's knitting needles go along with her.

For, in a flurry of brightly-colored spun yarn, Moncur is on a mission: to make 1,000 scarves for Iraqi widows and orphans in need.

The project started in November, with Jan personally resolving to knit 100 scarves to send overseas. But when she posted her project on sugardoodle.net, a Web site offering service ideas for young women and Scouts associated with the LDS Church, the goal increased tenfold.

"It became like a wildfire — people have just been so generous," said Moncur, a student body adviser at Brighton High School.

As word about her project spread, everyone around Moncur wanted to help.

Knitters from local LDS Relief Society and Young Women programs started donating, and non-knitters like her students learned to knit together before school started, surprising their teacher with handmade scarves at Christmas.

Packages have begun arriving at her doorstep, too — from men learning to knit on YouTube, Boy Scouts collecting scarves for their Eagle projects and unsuccessful knitters offering fleece-cut scarves.

Though her son, Philip Christensen, was killed in an Army training accident at Fort Riley in April 2005, Moncur said the project has been a healing process that has increased her love for people she has never met.

"My son would write and tell me that the media didn't always tell how appreciative the Iraqi people are," Moncur said.

Moncur began her project after meeting seven Iraqi women at a "Hugs for Healing" tea, along with seven Utah Gold Star Mothers who have lost their military sons in the war with Iraq.

The tea was hosted by Families United Toward Universal Respect (FUTURE), a nonprofit group created by a Virginia LDS couple Fareed and Joan Betros in 2005. Its goal is to strengthen Iraqi families by teaching women a three-tiered program patterned after the LDS Relief Society.

Three of the other Gold Star Mothers — Colleen Parkin, Carol Thomas Young and Amy Galvez — are planning a trip with FUTURE in mid-May, and Moncur decided to join the trip when she realized she could offer personal "gifts of love" to women experiencing similar feelings of loss overseas.

"Our sons loved those people, and we learned to love them, too (at the tea), as we heard them speak and tell us they were appreciative of what our sons had done," Moncur said.

At the "Hugs for Healing" tea, Moncur learned that there are 3 million widows and 2.5 million orphans in Iraq, many of whom have lost family members in war.