Quite a while ago, Laura mentioned stumbling upon a website for a charity that accepts knitted eight inch squares and sews them into blankets for orphaned children in South Africa. This appealed to me since I'm a sucker for service projects and knitting is something I love.
About a month ago I started looking into it deeper and decided I wanted to plan some sort of drive to collect squares to send. I mentioned on my Facebook page that I'd be collecting them, and Rebecca offered her assistance in my crazy scheme.
Rebecca wrote an article that was put in the News Journal and we planned a "Knit-a-Square Day" for last Saturday. A girl from the Standard-Examiner even called to interview me and did a story.
I did some research on postage and found that a 20 lb. box would cost about $53 to mail. I worried that I'd never collect 20 pounds of knitted squares.
Laura asked me what my expectations were, and I told her that I had none. I planned on sending the 15 or so squares that I'd done, and anything above that would be fantastic. She told me that she thought 500 was a good number. At which point I told her that she was a lunatic.
The turnout on Saturday was overwhelming. People kept dropping off squares they'd knit or crochet and I was genuinely amazed. My fear of not having enough squares to send quickly turned into "how the hell am I going to raise enough money to send all the squares I have?!"
Going from having no expectations to sitting in a huge pile of handiwork was crazy, but looking at the bigger picture, it's such a drop in the bucket.
"The aim of knit-a-square is to raise as much awareness as possible for the plight of the children of South Africa. As well as to warm them with beautifully hand knitted and crocheted blankets from around the world. The issue of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS is widely unknown around the world. There are 1.4 million children already orphaned in South Africa followed by a sickening 500 children orphaned daily. This is so sad and one of the biggest issues in the world today." - Kalai McDonald, Knit-a-Square
We've collected 395 squares so far, which will go towards keeping 15 children warm. 15 kids out of 1,500,000. Wow.
The feeling of great pleasure over the amount of squares collected is quickly dispelled by a look at the numbers.
I guess I just need to remember that as a community, we HAVE helped 15 children that otherwise wouldn't have received a blanket.
Looking at the amount of good that's been done is easier than looking at the amount of work that needs to still be done.
This time of year gets everyone thinking about what they're thankful for, what they have. Take a second to think about what's great about your life and the freedoms and opportunities you enjoy. Then take a second to think about people who have it a lot worse than you.
Next time you see the Salvation Army bellringers at Wal-Mart- don't avoid making eye contact and shuffle by, smile and give them your pocket change. They're out there freezing their asses off trying to make life better for someone else.
And next time you see me, cough up ten bucks for postage, I got some damn squares to send!
No comments:
Post a Comment