BLANKET SUPPORT – A new shop item to support the Gogos

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Hi everyone!

You may remember a few months ago, we mentioned that we were introducing a program which allowed us to financially support some of the communities of volunteer Gogos who do such a beautiful job sewing up our squares into blankets.

You can read more about this exciting initiative in Excitement in Evaton and Tea with the Sisonke Gogos. (You should definitely re-read these stories when you have the time!)

This project has proven to be quite a success, and we’d like to be able to continue this support, and possibly even expand it to other groups of volunteers in the future!

To this end, we’ve added a new shop item:

blanketpayment

Blanket support for a Gogo

For just $5 USD, you can provide blanket payments for one or more blankets, supporting the women in the KAS community who in turn support us and the kids.

As well as the immediately obvious benefits (beautifully assembled blankets), supporting these women has great trickle on effects for their families and community. We’ve often heard stories of these older women becoming primary caregivers for very young children, or supporting other members of the community by providing child care or other important help. Financial support for these women also supports many other people in the community.

In supporting the Gogos by sponsoring a blanket support payment, you can be a part of this initiative to help the whole community.

35 Squares

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It takes 35, 8 inch (20 centimetre) squares to make one blanket for an AIDS orphan.

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Many members of Knit-a-Square are fiber artists. They create magnificent images on a canvas of wool to the delight of all who see them.

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By Anneke

Cardinal

By Linda

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By Robin

The most important square for the orphans of South Africa however, is the

Plain Jane

A Plain Jane is a simple one yarn, one stitch square. When possible we sew one artistic square with 34 Plain Janes to make our blankets.

One of our members, Anne from Canada, has written a beautiful poem that explains of the importance of “PJs”:

THE “PLAIN JANE SQUARE”

Knit Plain Jane

 

I’m just a ‘plain Jane’ square

Nothing fancy, nothing grand!

Just a ‘plain Jane’ square,

Made by a loving hand.

You think I’m not important?

Well, think again, my friend!

‘Cause many other ‘plain Janes’

When they’re joined end to end

Crochet-Square-Plain_JaneWill keep an orphan warm at night,

Wrap ‘round them on cold days,

And tell them that they’re loved

In, oh, so many ways!

Even if you have never knit or crocheted before, you can master a Plain Jane in no time!

Won’t you give it a try? Here are the links to free KAS patterns:

Knit Plain Jane Pattern

Crochet Plain Jane Pattern

Friday spotlight

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Every Friday, on the Knit-a-Square blog, I will be introducing you wonderful people who make up KAS, sometimes volunteers and sometimes, like today, our reason for being, the AIDS orphans of South Africa.

SWEETNESS

Sweetness, is a small AIDS orphan who is being helped by Ten Thousand Homes, a charity for children, in South Africa, for whom the knit-a-square community are knitting and crocheting.

Here is her story, by Brittany who works for Ten Thousand Homes.

Her name is Sweetness.

She is barely three years old and already her eyes reflect the harsh reality that is her life.

 

Orphaned as an infant, Sweetness has been passed around from relative to relative before landing on the doorstep of a widowed uncle.

Out of necessity, he is gone most of the day at work, leaving the three year old behind to fend for herself.

Infected with AIDS, his death will follow swiftly on the heels of her parents and Sweetness will soon be orphaned for the second time.

When I first started work in Kabokweni, Sweetness was shy and would not approach me willingly. She is too solemn for one so small and often stares at her feet rather than respond when I try to talk to her. Sometimes I pick her up whether she acknowledges me or not and hold her close. She doesn’t fight, but lays passive in my arms and keeps her head down. I feel the hard, roundness of her stomach. She looks like a pregnant toddler, but I know that this is often caused by malnutrition.

Yesterday, I was playing a game with about fifty of the kids. They were being loud and acting more rambunctious than normal, but still for the most part good-natured. There was a lot of noise, that amazing crescendo unique to children and, while I was laughing and yelling along with the rest of them, organizing a game was fast becoming impossible.

And in that moment of chaos, I felt tiny arms encircle my leg and a small body pressed itself close to me.

This alone was not unusual, but as I glanced down and saw Sweetness, her cheek resting on my thigh her eyes raised to me, I felt near tears. She stayed glued to me the rest of the day and I let her cling all she wanted. Or maybe it was she who let me cling.

This is why we knit and crochet for Knit-a-Square. Won’t you join us?

Knit-a-square Teacher Resource

KasCare finances – January to March 2014

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Hi again everyone!

We’ve had some feedback recently that our donors and members would like to know a little bit more about how your donations are handled. To that end, I’ve put together an ‘executive summary’ for the last three months – January through March 2014 – to share with you all.

These three months have been a very interesting time, with a hugely successful fundraising push in February for the South Africa Sorting Space Appeal and some fantastic new shop options, but also a couple of unexpected costs. Hopefully by sharing this information with you all, you’ll feel even more confident in supporting KasCare and the Knit-A-Square project.

First though, a couple of very important caveats!

  • These results are not audited! We will not be auditing this information until the end of the Australian financial year, at the start of July.
  • These results and graphs are approximations. They’re drawn from real numbers, but there are things I haven’t fully accounted for in the graphs; things like fluctuating exchange rates between different countries. As such, I haven’t shown specific numbers, just approximate percentages.
  • This information is taken from the KAS Shop, the KasCare Paypal account, and the KasCare bank statements. If you have made a direct donation to any of the KasCare affiliated projects (like KAS SA or the JBay recycling project) without using an actual KasCare form, it will not be shown in these graphs.

Now, let’s get on to the fun stuff!

Where did KasCare funding come from?

Over the past three months, we’ve averaged a little under $3000 US per month in income. This has come almost exclusively from donations by members like yourselves, so we thank you humbly for your support.

About a third of our donations come from recurring donations from members. I really must make a special mention to these individuals, because they make it possible for us to plan safely and confidently for the future, knowing that this much at least will keep coming in every month.

The shop has also been very successful this year, although I’ll discuss that in a lot more detail very shortly.

I hope this graph makes it clear just how much we rely on and value your support as donors!

Where did KasCare funding go?

All of those donations allow us to do amazing things!

Over three quarters of the funds donated to KasCare went to KAS South Africa. This is the team on the ground who do the assembling and distribution of all the wonderful goodies that you produce! You can see the fantastic work that this team does in the reports from South Africa on the forum, as well as in all the beautiful photos from the sorting room!

As with all charities, there are running costs. PayPal in particular does come with a small fee on every transaction, but in exchange it provides a safe and low-risk way for people all around the world to donate. We want to make sure people feel confident in any online processes handling their money, so this extra security that PayPal gives us is very valuable.

You’ve probably noticed that purple segment with the * next to it. Most of this was a single, once off, but unexpected cost. It came about because of a small error made some time ago, which was only discovered earlier this year. That meant that a cost which should have been a few small payments made over several years, ended up being one large cost all at once! While it was certainly an unwelcome surprise, it is completely resolved now and you shouldn’t be seeing it again in any of our future reports.

The really good news is that even after covering our budgeted costs for KAS South Africa and all of our ongoing running expenses, we still had a small extra margin to put into our savings! This will become very important in the next couple of months, as South Africa is heading into winter and distribution costs start going up!

Which causes spoke most to us?

I mentioned earlier that I was going to speak in more detail about the shop. Here it is! The following graph shows the number of sales for each of our shop items (rather than the amount of money those items brought us).

The KAS Ops Sponsorship items introduced last year continue to go strong, with lots of support for sewing kits and paper for the creches.

I’m also delighted to see that we’ve had a few teachers coming through the shop, picking up copies of the KasKids Teacher Guide for their schools. Our teachers do a fantastic job of sharing both a love of knitting and a passion for KAS in their students, so they get double kudos here!

One of the new initiatives we kicked off this quarter was to move appeals into the shop too. You may have noticed that the Sorting Space Appeal had a specific page for donations, set up as part of the shop, rather than us simply asking you to use the “Donate Now” button. This allows us to identify exactly how much of the donated money was sent to us specifically for this cause, as opposed to just being a general purpose donation. That makes it easier to ensure that it is used for that cause, and for us to gauge how strong your support is for that particular cause. Clearly, everyone really supported the Sorting Space appeal. Thank you for your enthusiasm for this milestone change!

In closing…

In closing, I want to thank everyone for your ongoing support of KAS, whether you are a regular donator, an occasional donator, one of our dedicated crafters, or even just spreading the word. We appreciate the efforts of every single one of you.

This is the first financial report of its type, but hopefully not the last! It is my intention to provide similar sorts of details to everyone after each financial quarter.

I’d also love to hear feedback from you about these reports. Is there something I missed which you would like me to talk about? Would you like more detail? Less detail? Too many words, not enough pictures? 🙂 (I do that, I know!)

If you have questions about this, please ask them below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Here’s to another exciting quarter coming up!

A SEWING KIT FOR THE GOGOS: NEW SHOP ITEM!

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Hi everyone!

 

We've got a new item up in the shop today, specifically in response to some of the feedback in January that you wanted to (a) be able to support the Gogos who do such a fantastic job assembling squares in South Africa, and (b) have more options to make donations for less than $10. We bandied a few ideas back and forth with the SA team, and borrowed a few thoughts from the New Year thread, and we have a few great ideas for new shop items. This is the first of them!

 

Sewing kit for a Gogo

 

Our wonderful team of Gogos (older women) in South Africa use these sewing kits to make up all of the donated squares into blankets, but that’s not the end of it. A sewing kit also makes it possible for them to repair or even make their own clothes, blankets and other valuable items.

Depending on individual needs and interests, a sewing kit might include some combination of scissors, needles, thread, pins, yarn, knitting needles, crochet hooks, fabric, or various other vital crafting tools and materials. Your donation will be helping these women to help us, and to help themselves.

 

For just $9, you can purchase one of these sewing kits now from the Sewing Kit page on the KAS shop.

All the other shop items are still there too, so keep an eye out for something which touches you, maybe Fuel for the KasVan or some Snacks for a Distribution?

 

 

 

* Please note $9 is strictly representative of the average cost of a kit, as precise costs can fluctuate from case to case. All KAS Ops Sponsorship donations are added to a common fund, used to cover operational costs in South Africa.

A love story

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800px-Old_booksIn this blog, I will chronicle a love story.

Like any good love story, it will be filled with heroes and villains, triumphs and defeats, courage and despair and it will be threaded throughout with hope.

As is often the case, the lovers in this story were strangers from different worlds and cultures brought together by a shared sense of compassion and a common desire to act.

This is not the love story of one couple, but rather of thousands of people who share the love for the millions of abandoned children in South Africa.

 

 

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Ronda Lowrie in South Africa with one of our KAS Kids.

The extraordinary determination of two women, Ronda Lowrie and Sandy McDonald and their families, who refused the easy way out, have given us the chance to act.

In Australia, from L-R, Sunny Blumson (Cressida's husband), Cressida, Zanny Blew (my mother, Kalai and Sandy. at the World KASOTG (knit-a-square-on-the-go) day 2009 Roger was taking the picture!

In Australia, from L-R, Sunny Blumson (Cressida’s husband), Cressida, Zanny Blew (my mother, Kalai and Sandy. at the World KASOTG (knit-a-square-on-the-go) day 2009 Roger was taking the picture!

We can no longer honestly say, “It’s tragic, but there is nothing we can do,” in the face of the Aids epidemic in Africa. The creation of Knit-a-Square gives us all the opportunity to make a concrete difference in the lives of children who have lost their parents to the horrendous disease, Aids.

I will be introducing you to the many protagonists, sharing their photos and stories. I will be telling you about all their wonderful accomplishements, in the hope that you too will become an actor in this fabulous tale. Join us!