February ‘23 News
Well here we are 3 years in to our existence and still we are in demand – a huge thank you to all of you for your continued support and efforts - truly amazing contributions all round.
What have we been up to this month?
As you know we are still striving to supply essential items to Ukraine, ranging from scrubs and camouflage netting and on to even crutches this month. The idea for crutches came about because so many people said they had them spare as hospitals won’t let them return them. Rosie asked her contacts if they needed any and they replied that they did.
This last weekend we sent out yet another consignment to Ukraine comprising scrub sets, the collected crutches, clothing and duvets. Thank you to all who sourced crutches and to all those of you who sewed the scrubs.
Rosie has been contacted this month by Dr Andrew Kih, the lead doctor for a new rehabilitation centre located just outside of Kiev. He had heard of us through Olga’s brother Danny and wanted to learn from us and our colleagues here in the UK. We are about to introduce him to staff at the Royal Hospital for Neuro Disability locally (who we have supplied a lot of scrubs to in the past few years) as well as the Royal Military Hospital at Stanford Hall (which has replaced Headley Court). We hope to set up a training collaboration between Ukraine and UK in which we can assist on a practical level. We are delighted to support him in any way that we can.
Every day we get messages from Ukraine about what our donations are doing, the emotions they engender and the well being they stimulate here is just one message :-
The medical personnel are over the moon with the last lot of scrubs especially the females as they say the scrubs make them feel human. They love the quality as they retain their form even after many washes. They are not accustomed to the quality of workmanship. As a consignment arrives the nurses rush down and have been in tears of happiness and joy that outsiders are willing to help them, and that is terribly moving and a serious indictment of their daily ordeals and trial just trying to save lives.
Julia in Ukraine distributes all of our kit at the moment. She has said
Thank you very much Rosie. If other people did 10% of what you do we could feel very secured ❤️
Thank you very much for everything you have done for us. Not only for the goods you sent but also for the spiritual support which was very strongly felt in a little notes which made me crying few times. I can’t express the gratitude of the doctors who received your suits. Especially surgeons who have to change clothes 2-3 times a day. All of them were excited with quality. I would like to write a post about your contribution in the supply of hospitals and tag you if you don’t mind.
So far we have supplied over 1,500 kgs of donations - scrubs, scrub hats, duvets and bedding, crutches, medical equipment - for Ukraine which is something to be really proud of.
We have a request, for your help please, via the OTP Bank, for young families in need from occupied Zaporizhy. They are asking for any clothing to get them through – so if you or any of your friends would like to knit scarves, hats, gloves, jumpers, it would be very well received. This initiative is being coordinated by the OTP Bank and is aimed at 2000 young families who come from the occupied territories and have no access to basics – for the most part they are homeless mothers and children – so if you can please, please, put get people to put their needles to good use in the coming weeks. We have opted to support the age range 0-6 year old children and Rosie has also put out a request on other networks to ask people to knit.
“New children and baby clothes and toys my colleagues from the bank are distributing to orphanages. They are packing the presents in the box and bring them with other stuff which they purchase.”
This is the quilt that Brigid and her family had been working on for a long time. When she moved she bought the quilt into the Scrubbery to see if there was anything we could do with it. Hilary picked up the challenge, finished off the huge quilt, and we were going to raffle it to raise money, but instead with permission we have sent it to Ukraine to be auctioned there. Thank you to Brigid, her family and Hilary.
One to keep an eye on:
As you know Rosie and Fleur Anderson have been working in the background to try and get a proper system in place for PPE procurement and have had many discussions with civil servants and supply chains. Well, the latest is that our formidable ladies are going to go up to Sheffield at the behest of Joanna Morrison who is the Supply Chain Co-Ordination and Corporate communications lead. The discussion is set to focus on future systems, processes and sourcing protocols for scrubs going forward. The meeting is being scheduled in March.
On a side note as yet we have had no response about our enquiry to repurpose unsuitable PPE that was stockpiled and now earmarked for burning! Literally money up in smoke. We await a government reply to our requests for information.
Thank You
First and foremost, we need to applaud Ann H and Akansha Roy – between the two of them we have been given 1419 tubes of toothpaste for the wellbeing bags. Well done Ann for putting in the request and then picking up the donation, and to Akansha for making it a reality they are really invaluable in our wellbeing bags.
The whole team at Men’s Community Shed in Roehampton they have come up trumps in terms of designing and building 2 kinder boxes, returns box and 4 large picture size boxes for the Oasis Academy library.
Thank you to the Curtain Tailor who has donated large amounts of cloth and funded our latest thread purchase. We very grateful. Some of their fabric is already on the new set of camouflage nets, moving from white to slightly more coloured.
Other News
We have been given the task by the Oasis Academy of creating their library – it has been and continues to be a herculean task. The core team have been covering books, sorting books, coding books, affixing spine labels, stocking shelves etc. If you have any time to spare do please pop in and spend a couple of hours helping out – we are up against the clock to get the library ready to do for March. Thank you so much to those who have already been working on Team Library.
For the library project we could use any unwanted DVD cases which we will use as dividers between the sections on the shelves. If you have any spare please drop them in.
Alongside our library project we know the school are looking for anyone who can spare some time on fixed days and fixed times to come and help out 1 on 1 with children to help them with their reading skills. There is a process to follow due to the safeguarding aspect of this work, but once completed it is all plain sailing after that.
We have recently sent out some samples to 3 London hospitals of our scrub hats. This was to a) reduce costs for hospitals by moving away from disposable hats and b) provide something more fitting – literally – to accommodate all head and hair shapes and styles. Whipps Cross are the first hospital to come back with a request for hats of particular design, so that is a good start. Our focus this month has been working on sleep masks for the Sleep Well Project – they put in a request for at least 400.
One final piece of news – we have now been given the go ahead to investigate the possibility of getting Scrubbery WIFI in the building – albeit at a cost – but if we did get it sorted it would allow for all the charity administration to be undertaken in daylight hours.
We are still very short on people to sew – especially as we now have a rush on for hats and sleep masks – please do put the word out – full instruction and friendly back up are provided of course.