Total underwear collected is 1,037,377

Couple of big changes to let you know about this month!

As many of you may know, I set up Smalls in 2010 when I returned from a volunteering holiday in Ethiopia after discovering that a lack of underwear was a real issue in poor and remote areas, particularly for women and children. Something as simple as having pants allows women to remain in the workplace and girls to remain in school each month, giving them a better chance of fighting their way out of poverty. Recently, I’ve received a few requests from within the UK for donations of underwear. In response to these requests, we’ve changed our constitution to allow us to help charities trying to alleviate poverty in a similar way in the UK. We’ll be implementing this change from 1 August 2019.

Thank you to everyone who has supported our work with a financial donation through the charitable giving platform MyDonate. As MyDonate is closing on 30 June, we’re moving to a new platform called Wonderful. It doesn’t charge charities any service or processing fees, which means that 100% of the money you donate goes directly to doing good. It’s also a wonderful platform for fundraising if you’d like to help us by running, swimming, baking (or anything else to raise money). Every penny you donate to Smalls is helping us to make a difference to the lives of the women and children we support.

This month, 11,375 items of underwear have made it to Africa or started their journey. Thanks to Zahir and Khaleel from One Life Global Welfare for picking up 10,000 new pants and new and gently worn bras. The underwear is for internally displaced people living in camps in Mogadishu, Somalia. Thanks also to Dochas Education for taking new pants and bras to Nsanje in Malawi. We also provided a further 400 pairs of pants to the Tumaini Fund for their hygiene kits. And we were delighted to provide underwear for the first time to Paul Moffat of Future of Taru who will be taking 725 pairs of new pants to children in Taru, Kenya.

For details of where all your donations go, please have a look at our underwear timeline https://www.smallsforall.org/category/pants-timeline/

I’m delighted to tell you we’re now opening donations received in April! Huge thanks to the sorting volunteers for their hard work in tackling the mountain of donations. If you sent us your email address but haven’t yet received an acknowledgement, please bear with us as we’re still working without electricity!

Thank you so much to everyone who has made a financial contribution or underwear donation to support our work. We hugely appreciate it – as do the women and children who benefit from your generosity.

Maria