Total underwear collected is 2,296,752
Thank you for sending us a pantastic 1,675 parcels in September.
Since our last Talking Pants, we’ve provided new pants and new & gently worn bras to 6 organisations:
- 2,030 pairs of pants to Mtende Community Project, a charity working in Ekwendeni, Malawi supporting women and girls with hygiene kits.
- 100 pairs of pants and bras to Women in Prison, an organisation supporting women in the community and their women’s centres.
- 840 pairs of pants to Care4Calais (Slough/Heathrow).
- 1,025 pairs of pants to Happy Baby Community, an organisation based in London providing women who are pregnant or have young children with essential items.
- 280 pairs of pants to NNLS Destitute Asylum Seekers Drop In, an organisation based in London.
- 456 pairs of pants and bras to Refugees Welcome Crawley.
Thanks to you, we were able to provide bras to The Salvation Army recently. The organisation’s Phoebe Burton told us, “We have a women’s safehouse for survivors of modern slavery. A lot of our ladies have no recourse to public funding or the right to work in the UK, thus affecting their ability to afford bras. We do have a clothing cupboard with second-hand clothing donations, but we don’t often receive bras so it’s a huge help to be able to get some from Smalls for All.”
We also provided underwear to Ace of Clubs in London. The organisation’s Charlie Glynn told us, “We are a charity that supports homeless and vulnerable people. We feed up to 200 people a day. We also run 30 showers a week and give underwear to our guests – we can never have enough boxer shorts.” And here is some feedback they’ve been able to share with us:
- “It makes me feel human again, to be able to shower then put clean pants on. Sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference, so thank you.”
- “I am so grateful, I can’t believe they are new and for me.”
- “Wow, these are lovely and I get to keep them.”
- “It’s amazing that you can give new pants – thank you so much.”
- “I am so grateful for the underwear. It’s made my day.”
In March, we posted about underwear we’d given to the Zambia and Malawi Community Partnership. As a reminder, the Partnership works through Tafika, a local Youth Organisation working in over 500 rural villages and well over 200 local sports teams. Tafika asked the Partnership to find people/organisations to help young women with sports bras and pants so they would have no barriers to competing in sports teams. The Partnership’s Michael James told us, “I just wanted to let you know the container arrived in Malawi and the sports bras were distributed to teams and women in the community. I’ve attached some pictures to let you see what was happening on the ground. The senior netball team were absolutely delighted and you can see them in the pictures celebrating winning the Northern Region Cup. They are wearing old Strathclyde Sirens kit, your bras and pants, and trainers donated by the Scottish running community. This is a really awesome result for these young women. Thank you for your part in making this happen for them.”
This year so far, we’ve supplied 115,495 pairs of pants and new or gently worn bras to people in need. All of this was made possible by your generous donations of underwear and money. It can be quite exciting at the warehouse when Royal Mail, couriers or people drop off donations so you can imagine how excited I was when Wacoal donated 36 boxes of lovely new pants and bras! Thank you so much Wacoal for this wonderful donation.
With so many more of us working from home, those hard-to-dispose-of ink cartridges can pile up! Sign up with Recycle4Charity (naming Smalls for All as your charity) and you can send them your ink cartridges for free. They will either be cleaned, refilled and packed to be used again or broken down into raw materials and recycled into plastic ‘wood’ beams or planks. Proceeds from remanufacturing go to Smalls, earning up to £2 per cartridge AND cutting down on waste going to landfill!
As always, thank you all for supporting Smalls,
Maria