Home > Talking Pants > Talking Pants – January 2019

Total underwear collected is 911,722

Congratulations to Andrew Paxton, winner of the January lottery.

We’ve had our first distribution of 2019! A further 400 pairs of pants have been supplied to the Tumaini Fund who work with widows and orphans in Kagera, Tanzania. Our thanks to Tracy for collecting them from us and making sure they get there safely. As you know, we work with organisations who provide hygiene kits for girls and women. The support we’re able to give by providing pants for the kits makes a huge difference in enabling more kits to be produced, so going forward we’ll always have a need for black pants in sizes 8 to 10-12 in full brief, mini or high leg styles.

In terms of collecting ladies’ pants, I just wanted to clarify what we collect as we sometimes get questions about sizes, colours and styles. First of all, the sizes we ask for is based on what we have the most need for. We collect all sizes as, yes, there will be women in African countries who wear size 14 and above, but the requests we receive from the people we work with are mainly for sizes 8 to 14. The smaller sizes are given to teenage girls as well as young women. We also collect all colours, but we do have a particular need for black pants for the hygiene kits in certain sizes and styles for purely practical reasons. And again for practical reasons, thinking about the women who will receive your donations and their circumstances, we find that the fuller styles of pants, e.g. high leg, midi, bikini and not thongs, work best. Hope that all makes sense!

We’re often asked if we’ve received a parcel of underwear that someone’s been kind enough to donate. This can be a surprisingly tricky question to answer! So we thought it would be helpful if we explained why. First, it can take a few days to reach us. Then, when it arrives, it’s loaded into a car with all the other parcels and taken to our warehouse ready for opening. We rely completely on pantastic volunteers who come and open/sort your donations. We have 2 – sometimes 3 – opening/sorting days each week, but sometimes the donations come in faster (not complaining!) than we can sort them and it can take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks from when you send a parcel to our being able to open it. In May 2018, the data protection rules changed. This means we’re unable to keep records that would allow us to trace people’s names and addresses or tie them to a particular donation or to publicly thank people on our website. However, if you enclose an email address we’ll include you in a monthly thank you message once your parcel’s been opened. Pease be aware that it can take up to 6 weeks before you hear from us. We’re unable to respond by post because as a small charity, run almost exclusively by volunteers, we don’t have the resources to allow us to do this.

Thank you so much to everyone who has made an underwear or financial contribution to support the work of Smalls for All. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. Please know that we value each and every donation and that your help is making a difference to people’s lives.

Maria