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Ariel Butler has a preschooler at home in Northfield.


"We went to the Mall of America yesterday. She can walk. But she gets tired after a little while, she gets obstinate and she doesn't want to walk any more. She wants you to carry her," Butler said.


Minnesota is a long way from an Aegean beach or the Jordanian border, but Butler said she still feels a connection when she sees pictures and videos of desperate refugees from the Middle East — many of them with babies and small children. 

So on Wednesday morning, Butler and a handful of other women packed up dozens of donated baby carriers — the soft, form-fitting packs meant to hold a child to a parent's chest or back.


They're shipping the carriers to California and a charity called Carry the Future, founded in September by a blogger and mom, Cristal Munoz-Logothetis, who was moved by the image of 3-year-old 

, the Syrian boy whose body was found on a Turkish beach this fall.


Munoz-Logothetis collected 3,000 child carriers earlier this year, flew with them to Greece and helped parents put them on shortly after they landed in Europe.


In Bloomington on Wednesday, the women packing up 50 carriers in a library meeting room admitted to some naiveté about the effort. They say they're familiar with stories of donated goods that go to waste and the argument that cash is the easiest to move and most effective aid, but that didn't stop them from trying to help.


The first batch of carriers from Minnesota went in the mail on Tuesday. The group hopes to send another shipment to Carry the Future 

Butler said she hopes even such simple gestures may yet prove a better antidote to terror than banning some refugees outright, as has been suggested by some politicians.


"I think its great diplomacy, trying to tell the people who live in Syria and who are fleeing to Greece and to Europe, Donald Trump does not speak for all of us," she said. "We're concerned about you, and we want to help, and we're not sure how to help, because we're just normal people like you."

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A group of Minnesota mothers concerned about Syrian refugee families hope the soft-sided carriers will help families on their long journeys.

Twin Cities moms hope donated baby carriers will keep refugee children safe

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