At the end of our first year as Love Thy Baby, we have much to celebrate. Our volunteer base has grown. New groups, such as Atria Canyon Creek, Hearts to Hands, and Dallas Area Fiber Artists, have joined with us to help us serve more babies. Our partnerships with existing groups such as the Knit Wits at the Coppell Senior Center, the Irving Quilt Guild, and SWISH at FUMC Coppell have thrived and a number of other groups have provided donations and conducted showers for us throughout the year.
In 2015, our total donations exceeded 40,000 items which is an average of almost 3,400 items each month. We increased by 11% over 2014 overall, with a 16% overall increase in handmade items!
Our focus on providing more warm blankets has been a huge success! With the support of the LTN board and more money to buy fabric and supplies, our volunteers have responded with remarkable levels of donations every month. We delivered over 15,000 blankets, 19% more blankets than last year, and a record number of quilts in one year, 2940!
We have continued to grow our donations to Parkland, where we serve the most babies, but we have also touched more babies’ lives through John Peter Smith, Hope 4 Refugees, Sharing Life, Family Place, Nexus, Dallas Life Homeless Shelter, PediPlace, White Rock Center for Hope, New Beginnings, and Iglesia Bautista El Alfarero, the agencies who distributed items for us this year.
We applaud the work of our volunteers and celebrate the fact that they have made a difference in so many precious lives this year!
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For those interested in more details, here is a view of how we have grown over the last few years in terms of donations out by item. The items highlighted in yellow are the ones that are mostly handmade items, the key work of our volunteers!
