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From our early days of receiving eight parcels a week, Knit-A-Square South Africa has grown to the point where we collect, on average, a truck load of mail from the Post Office on a weekly basis.  In July of this year we received 27 513 squares alone!

As you can imagine, we are delighted, but the logistics of unpacking, sorting and then distributing all these items is proving to be beyond what we can operationally cope with.  So, we have enlisted some help!

Erica Lüttich from the Outreach Foundation assisted us with advice when setting up the MedLemon Knitting Schools and she came to the rescue once again.

During the recent public school holidays, Erica and her team, held an educational week for 400 vulnerable children between the ages of 6 and 13 years who live in inner city Johannesburg.  They opened up their facilities in Hillbrow and together with 70 volunteers they looked after these children, during the day, for a week.

During the week, the children are guided with bible stories, fun games and recreational activities that include life skills workshops addressing sex education, drug awareness, care and support.

When Knit-A-Square South Africa asked Erica how we could help, she suggested we get involved with keeping the children warm – now that is something we know how to do! 

Having committed many of our blankets to various day care centres already, we didn’t have enough ready-made blankets to hand out to all of these children, but we did have beanies and tops.

Erica and her team collect all of the tops we had and the 70 volunteers help sort and size them, returning to KAS the tops they could not distribute because they were too small for the age group they were catering for.

During the Kids Week, and another Art Day in Kagiso based on the same format, Knit-A-Square through this partnership distributed 789 tops and beanies to vulnerable children during the coldest part of our winter.

We hope you enjoy the photos of your colourful and warm beanies and tops being distributed to these children.   

We will get back to reporting on the very many distributions we have completed over the winter, but the photos from this particular distribution were so sweet we decided to dedicate an entire report to it!

As you are all aware, we have moved into our new premises and although things are a little disorganised at the moment, we look forward to getting ourselves sorted, not having to carry heavy parcels upstairs and generally to a well organised and more efficient operation.

And lastly, we are sure that you will agree that a smile like this and hand drawn not of thanks, makes what we do very special!