The staff at Parkland frequently expresses their appreciation to
Newborns in Need not only for the quantity of donations received each
month but also for the quality! It is great knowing that the hard work
of our volunteers is truly meeting the needs of the precious babies born
there.
Volunteers often ask "How many of 'these' do they need each
month?" so we wanted to share more about the specific needs at Parkland
with you.
When we delivered the Christmas bags in December, we asked the Parkland
team for feedback and their immediate response was "blankets, we can
always use more blankets". While we were able to increase our donation
of quilts and afghans last year, we could not provide as many flannel
or fleece blankets due to the rising cost of cotton. Given our recent
grant from TI and the success of the Barnes and Noble fund raiser, we
have started buying more flannel this year and we are hopeful that our
volunteers will be able to make more of the receiving blankets each
month to help meet this need. We have been blessed recently with very
generous donations of yarn, cotton fabric and fleece and very faithful
volunteers, so we will continue to work to produce as many blankets as
possible. Last year, we donated a total of 10,513 blankets (receiving,
quilt, fleece, & afghans) and ideally we would like to be able to send out an average of 1000 blankets every month (12,000 for the year).
We are focused on raising the funds to be able to buy the raw materials
needed this year, so please keep up the great work you are doing on
sewing, knitting and crocheting the blankets!
In addition to blankets, we prepare layette packages for Parkland each
month which include one of our receiving blankets, a onesie or t-shirt, a
hat, and a pair of socks or booties. When available, we will also
include bibs or burp cloths. With these packages, ideally we want to
provide 200 layette sets each month. There is a limit
on space to store these in the nursery at Parkland so 200 bags is the
max we generally make up. Some months, we are not able to do the full
200 bags and that is usually due to a lack of onesies/shirts or
socks/booties. Given some of these are purchased items, our receipts
can vary month to month depending on donations. You can help in this
area by hosting a baby shower in your neighborhood, church or community
group. If you need more information on how to do that, ask at a meeting
or send us an email. We also have great patterns for t-shirts and
booties so if you are willing to help sew these items on a regular
basis, please let our meeting coordinator, Dotty Darrin, know!
Beyond these 200 layette sets, we do our best to provide extras of the shirts, hats, and socks
whenever possible so they are available when needed. They especially
need lots of extra hats! Parkland has told us that they could use well
over 1000 hats per month if we could provide them. We have really been
doing a great job on hats over the last 6 months and we donated 39% more
hats in 2013 than we did the year before. This year, we would like to
provide an average of 600 hats per month (more during the colder months), so keep on knitting, crocheting, sewing, and loom knitting those beautiful hats for the babies!
You may have noticed Dotty sorting and setting aside some of the
clothing at our Saturday meetings. Slightly larger hats can be used by
the children's cancer unit and while that is not our primary focus, we
do offer them some of our hats when we are able. While the majority of
babies in need are full-term babies, we have volunteers who make/buy
special items for the premature and sick babies in NICU as well as
making special burial clothing and memory envelopes (about 20 each month) for those babies that are lost at birth or in the early days of their lives.
Finally, we have our Christmas project for Parkland. In December, we
provide special holiday bags in addition to the normal layette sets. It
is our goal to include a warm sleeper or gown in each of these bags
rather than a shirt. Collecting enough sleepers for the bags is a
year-long project. As we enter the time of year when warm clothing is on sale, please keep your eyes out for great deals on sleepers.
You can bring them to any meeting and we will store them for use next
Christmas! We also plan to have a Sleepers in September drive again this
year, so stay tuned!
If you are unable to make items for Parkland and wish to contribute,
please consider making a cash donation for clothing, flannel or batting
or doing a collection drive for onesies, sleepers, or socks through your
friends, family, church or workplace. Please know that whatever way
you are able to support our mission, you are needed and truly
appreciated!
Article reprinted from February 23, 2014 Newsletter
Our annual Christmas bag project for Parkland was a huge success!
Thanks to the generosity of our volunteers in purchasing sleepers and
socks and working diligently to make Christmas bags, blankets, hats,
booties, stuffed animals, Christmas ornaments, bibs and burp cloths, we
were able to complete 363 bags AND leave extra clothing sets and hats as
well.
