MANCHESTER — Nine-year-old Mason Pare and his dad, Jeremy, a board member of Bread of Life Ministries, were talking a while back about the need to help people in the community who have fallen on hard times when Mason said he wanted to do something to help.

After thinking more about it, he had an idea to collect a basic item that wouldn’t be too costly for people to donate, that just about anyone could use and that, sadly, not everyone has.

Pillows.

So Mason and others, including Manchester town office staff and his fellow members of local Cub Scout Pack 622, are collecting pillows now until June 30 to be donated to Bread of Life to be given to adults and children who need them.

Mason, in a plea for people to help he wrote himself, is especially concerned that kids may not have pillows.

“I would like to ask you to please donate pillows to Bread of Life homes,” he wrote on a poster promoting the pillow drive that’s mounted above a small stack of donated pillows at the town office in Manchester. “Think of kids who don’t have pillows to sleep on every night. It must be hard to have nothing to put your head on. Please donate pillows because kids need pillows to sleep on. If they don’t their heads could start hurting really bad and we don’t want that to happen so please donate pillows.”

John Richardson, executive director of Bread of Life in Augusta, said the donated pillows will be given to people coming into its shelters for use while there and elsewhere if they wish to take them with them when they leave.

He said the shelter currently reuses pillows and other bedding after washing them, but hopes to be able to provide a new pillow and bedding to people when they arrive at the shelter.

“We need a lot of them. We serve hundreds of people in the shelter,” Richardson said. “There’s nothing good about coming into a shelter or moving into housing and receiving a pillow that is clean but has stains on it from use. A lot of folks come into our care and services scared and challenged by their circumstances. If we can give them, not just a clean bed, but a bed with (new sheets, blankets, pillow cases and pillows) it says to them, ‘you have value, you are important to us.’ It makes a difference.”

The organization has shelters providing temporary housing to homeless individuals, families and veterans and also has 85 units of housing in the area.

Richardson said the shelter also accepts donations of “beds in a bag,” which are a full set of bedding ready to be placed on a bed. The organization uses single beds.

He said pillows and bedding are “low hanging fruit” for supporters, or, in other words, something inexpensive enough for people without a lot of money to be able to donate.

The pillow drive organizers and shelter are seeking new pillows only.

A new pillow can be had for around $5.

“Some things are expensive, but this is a very basic, bare necessity,” said Jeremy Pare, who is a selectman in Manchester.

He said the town office got involved after he and Ann Young, town treasurer, talked about doing something to help others. He said the town has done similar things in the past, including helping with food drives and helping Wreaths Across America place wreaths on the graves of veterans.

“We’ve collected a few already,” said Debbie Southiere, deputy clerk and deputy tax collector, of the pillows. “That’s good.”

Pare said the pillow drive could become an annual local effort.

Keith Edwards — 621-5647

[email protected]

Twitter: @kedwardskj