‘Tis the season of giving. The holiday season tends to be a time when there are many opportunities for people to give back to their communities. This is the reason why Dr. Ariane Moffett, second-year resident at Sanford Health, is surprised at how many people have donated to her sock drive.
“I know it’s really busy with the holidays, so it’s just really heartwarming,” Dr. Moffett said.
How it started
Dr. Moffett grew up in Los Angeles. It was raining one day in 2012 when she was driving throughout the city, and she saw a homeless man standing on the sidewalk in the rain without an umbrella. She couldn’t stop thinking about him on her drive home and wanted to do something to help. She talked to her two younger sisters, and they decided to organize a blanket drive that year.
Ever since, they’ve organized a drive to collect blankets or socks for various community organizations.
“I think it’s just something that we’ve engrained into our family, so it’s one, a tradition. Two, we kind of have taken it where I’ve moved at least,” Dr. Moffett said.
Continuing the tradition
Dr. Moffett is a pediatric resident with Sanford’s residency program. She moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the summer of 2020 to start her residency. During her first year, she learned about the Children’s Inn during one of her rotations.
“I actually really fell in love with the whole place and their mission,” she said.
The Children’s Inn provides shelter and resources to victims of domestic violence and child abuse. Dr. Moffett took the initiative during her busy residency schedule to organize the sock drive in her new home of Sioux Falls. She asked for brand new socks for infants, kids, and women to donate to the Children’s Inn.
“It’s always hard when you move somewhere new. When I moved to the Bay Area from LA, our first sock drive in the Bay Area was really difficult because I didn’t have the community there that I could reach out to,” she said. “But here I do feel like I have a family within the Castle, especially within my residency program. I also love all my attendings. We’re all so close-knit.”
So many of her leaders in the Graduate Medical Education program have supported her in this initiative, sending emails to make staff aware of the sock drive and even allowing her to put donation bins in break rooms on every floor of the Sanford Children’s Hospital, the Specialty Clinic, and the Sanford Clinic at 69th Street & Louise Avenue.
Many staff members donated, and she was able to gather donations from the public at the Sanford Clinic at 69th and Louise.
“It’s my new community with my patients, and I just wanted to give back a little bit, especially to the population I will be treating in the future as a pediatrician,” she said.
People can still donate by ordering socks online and shipping them to:
- Pediatric Residency Sanford School of Medicine
1305 West 18th Street, Box 5039
Sioux Falls, SD 57117-5039
Learn more
- Sanford Health helps to fill backpacks and fight hunger
- Lions Club donates over 300 blankets to Sanford Children’s
- How you can help during COVID-19
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Posted In Community, People & Culture, Postgraduate Programs, Sioux Falls
