Liz learned about this and passed it along to me:
If you prefer to knit small items in the summer heat, we’d love to have you join us in knitting wool baby items to be sent to Afghanistan. Good way to use up oddballs of wool yarns, too.
The CURE Hospital in Kabul has asked us to send these specific items for
newborns: baby hats (head circumference of 10″ – 15″) baby socks (foot length of 2.5″ – 3.5″/no booties, please) baby blankets (minimum 40″ x 30″) .
Please do send these baby items to us as soon as you are ready. We’d like to ship several boxes as soon as possible in the next month or so. The hospital delivers newborns every day.
CURE is one of the few hospitals that serves very sick babies in their neonatal unit. Although, please keep in mind, we do not need items sized for premature babies. Just the sizes above. (Anything larger that we receive will be sent with our next delivery to older babies and children, so not to worry.)
We’re are probably going to soon announce a very large, more general campaign in time for winter delivery.
Meanwhile, we hope to get several hundred of these baby items packed up before we have to focus on our commitment to this other relief group. We just have to take advantage of these good shipping and distribution opportunities when they arise. Shipping to Afghanistan with reliable relief groups and manageable logistics are getting harder and harder to obtain.
And, when we receive specific requests from those working in Afghanistan, we do our best to say yes to the need.
Even though many are sweltering here (well, not in San Francisco, I confess!), this is the prime time for us to knit and crochet for Afghanistan. We’ll be shipping our gifts in September to arrive in time for winter distribution.
Our notes and mail addresses are here for your reference:
http://www.afghansforafghans.org/blanket.html
Our fiber memo is here for review:
http://www.afghansforafghans.org/aboutfibers.html
In anticipation of our upcoming large campaign, we would also appreciate if you could hand out flyers to your local yarn shop, community places, guilds, houses of worship, and other places where you encounter knitters and crocheters. We need to reach more people to keep on going. Passing out a couple flyers would be a boost. Even if you are not inclined to knit for Afghanistan at this time, getting the word out is an invaluable contribution with minimal effort. We count on the word-of-mouth to keep the momentum.
This is the to our link downloadable PDF flyer (uses Acrobat Reader):
http://www.afghansforafghans.org/afghansforAfghansflyer.pdf
Thank you for joining us if you can. Thanks for reading, as always. We should have some photos from the Afghan Mobile Mini Circus (remember those 700 colorful hats that everyone made earlier this year?) on our website within a week, and I will post when the page is up. You will get a real kick when you see the kids enjoying our hats. Thanks to all who participated and continue to be concerned about the people of Afghanistan.
Have a good weekend, everyone, Ann
Ann Rubin
http://www.afghansforafghans.org/
San Francisco, CA
