• Knit One Save One - August to October news
• Knit One Save One - May to July news

Knit One Save One - August to October news

THE KNIT ONE SAVE ONE CAMPAIGN HAS NOW FINISHED

If you have hats and messages ready and waiting to be sent then, never fear, just get them to us as soon as possible and we will still make sure they reach vulnerable babies.

Please do not knit any more for the campaign and do pass on the message to friends and family that the appeal has now ended.

1 October

With less than three weeks of the campaign to go, the hats and messages coming in to Save the Children head office are starting to slow down. We have received over 460,000 hats since April and we’re confident that we will reach our target of half a million by 21 October — the campaign’s final day.

Messages and letters to Gordon Brown are also still piling in and we are beginning to collate them ready to present them to the Prime Minister by the end of 2008. As many as 40,000 knitters have taken part in the campaign and a big thank you to every single one of you for giving up your free time (and wool!) to help save children’s lives. The hats have been flying out the door in the last month and 400,000 have now been sent to countries in Africa and Asia where high numbers of children die before their fifth birthday.

Recent shipments have included: 30,000 hats to Bangladesh; 25,000 hats to Liberia; and a massive 80,000 to Brazil. We are also about to send 50,000 hats directly to the Ministry of Health in Mongolia who plan to distribute them through every state hospital in the country. Closer to home, the Knit One, Save One team ran a stall at IKnit Day in London on 6 September. More than 2,000 people, young and old, came from all over the UK to attend the event and learn about all things knitting.

We talked to hundreds of people about the campaign and were happy to discover that over half of them had already heard of it. We managed to recruit lots of new campaigners and, to our delight, we soon had a group of happy people sitting round the stall knitting hats. Check out the pictures to see what a great day it was:

 

 

Save the Children volunteers and supporters have also been holding knitting events up and down the country. A volunteer at our Newquay shop took the knit-kit to her local Mothers’ Union group and challenged her fellow members to knit 1,000 hats for the campaign. They surpassed their target and the final total was 1,600 hats, which is amazing.

They got their local MP Dan Rogerson involved. They even taught him to knit! The group wrapped the whole project up on Sunday 21 September when they held a church service to bless the hats. They even had a hat-shaped cake to celebrate their success!

You can see the pictures below. A huge thank you to the Mothers’ Union in Newquay and all the groups around the country who have held events and gone to so much effort to promote the campaign.

 

 

So it’s almost over. As we sort and send out the last few hats we now look to the hand-in of messages to the Prime Minster to wrap up the Knit One, Save One campaign. When and where the hand-in will take place is still up in the air so watch this space for details. What we do know is that your hats have helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of newborn babies. Now let’s hope that your voice will help to save millions more. We call on the UK Government to do everything they can to dramatically reduce the numbers of children dying each year. Our call is so much stronger because it’s joined by your voice.

Want to do more to help save children’s lives? Visit our brand new campaigning pages and discover lots of other ways that you can help children around the world live past their fifth birthday. You've made a huge difference by giving up your time to help us save children's lives. We've got an amazing volunteer force that we'd love you to be a part of. Check out our Give Time section to see how you can get involved with an hour, a day, or a few days of your time. However much you can give helps us loads!

 

1 September 2008

As we approach the end of our campaign, the number of hats coming in to Save the Children is not showing any signs of slowing down. We have now received over 350,000 and a big thank you to all dedicated knitters for taking the time to take part in the campaign.

It’s been an exciting month with a ‘Knit One, Save One’ double page spread going out in The Sun on 12 August. As well as including an overview of the campaign, The Sun also printed our hat label for people to cut out and send in with their hats. Thank you to all Sun readers for sending in lots of wonderful messages to the Prime Minister.

The shipment of 10,000 hats that went to Kenya back in July have now arrived and Save the Children staff presented the woolly lifesavers to officials from the Kenyan Ministry of Health, explaining that the hats had been knitted by members of the British public who want to help children in countries like Kenya to survive. Whilst handing over this ‘hat petition’ we asked Kenyan officials to tell their own government to focus on Millennium Development Goal 4, which aims to reduce child mortality by two -thirds by 2015, when they attend the UN summit on the MDGs in September.

During the Kenyan event, 300 hats were also presented to the district Hospital in Maragua to be distributed at the maternity ward. Maragua, in central Kenya, has extremely low breastfeeding rates and the woolly hats were used to launch an accelerated campaign to promote breastfeeding in and around the district.

A total of 2,000 hats have also been presented to Kenyan provincial medical officers for distribution through hospitals with maternity services. This is a good opportunity to promote breastfeeding as one of the most simple and cost-effective ways of improving child survival.

A Kenyan baby sleeps under his hat.

More shipments of hats have been flying out the building. 50,000 went to Afghanistan a week ago and they should arrive just before their harsh winter sets in in October. In addition, we just sent 20,000 hats to India which will mainly go to help victims of the recent floods. Look out for the news updates from these countries next month.

Hats have also now arrived at their destination in South Africa. They have been given out to children who have fled Zimbabwe and are now living in refugee camps. We mainly work with older children in South Africa so we sent some of the bigger hats that people have knitted. As you can see from the pictures below these children seem to be loving their colourful woolly gifts.

 

 

Many thanks to all the knitters. Your support really is appreciated so much by us as well as babies around the world. Its amazing how saving a life can be so simple! The campaign ends on 21 October 2008 so make sure to send us your hats with your completed label attached before that date.

There are three really important things to remember about the 'Knit One, Save One' campaign:

1. Remember that the campaign ends on 21 October 2008 so don't send any more hats after that date.
2. Make sure you complete your hat label to Prime Minster Gordon Brown and attach it to your hat before sending it to us.
3. Please only send hats - not jumpers, booties or any other knitted items. If you have already sent in non-hats then we will do our best to use them but please don't send in any more.

Most importantly, remember that your hat can help us save a life. Your voice can help us save millions.

5 August

The campaign rolls on and the hats and messages to the Prime Minster continue to roll in. Of the 300,000 hats that have poured in through Save the Children’s doors since March, 220,000 of them have already been sent out to vulnerable babies in Africa and Asia.

Thanks to the all wonderful Save the Children staff working on the ground who have made sure that the hats reach children who really need them. We really are saving lives, people!

As you can see from our knit-o-meter (on the right), 25,000 people have taken part in the campaign so far, making us half-way to reaching our target of involving 50,000 knitters. Knit One, Save One ends on October 21 so we all have just two and a half months to get our friends and family involved. So get recruiting to show the government that the public want them to act now to save the lives of newborn babies around the world.

The campaign had a big boost last week when Reckitt Benckiser, one of Save the Children’s extremely generous corporate sponsors, paid for the shipments of 50,000 hats to Tanzania and Angola. In Tanzania, where high numbers of newborn babies die from hypothermia, the hats are extremely welcome and will make a real difference. A huge thank you to Reckitt Benckiser for extending their considerable support to these two countries to help out the Knit One, Save One campaign.

As well as sending shipments out to China, Myanmar (Burma) and Zimbabwe this week, we have also received photos back from our programme in Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone 270 out of every 1,000 children die before they reach their fifth birthday. That’s more than 1 in 4. It has worst child mortality rate in the world and we are so happy to be able to help. Check out these stories and pictures of tiny newborn babies in Sierra Leone sporting their life-saving woolly accessories.

Isha and Kadiatu's babies

This baby boy was born at 11am at home by a traditional birth attendant in Kroo Bay, which is a slum town in Sierra Leone. In this picture he's just one and a half hours old. He's sporting one of the hats knitted by Save the Children supporters and distributed through the Kroo Bay clinic. His mum, Isha, has a fever and isn't well. Her sister, Mary, has come to the clinic to get the baby weighed and registered. Mary explains, "The hat is good for the cold during the rainy season. A cold wind comes with the rain and brings problems for babies. They get very cold."

Kadiatu's baby, Kadija, in one of the hats knitted by Save the Children supporters in the UK. Kadiatu explains, "I'm very happy with the hat. As a mother I worry about getting enough food and clothing for my children. It floods where we live and gets very cold when the water comes into the house."

Here’s some more pictures from the Kroo bay clinic in Sierra Leone:

Visit Kroo Bay on our interactive website

Finally, it looks like Knit One, Save One will have a page (or maybe even two) dedicated to it in The Sun on Tuesday 12 August. Look out for the article and make sure you show it to all your friends and family.

Knit-o-meter

Check out how many knitters have taken part in the campaign. Get friends and family involved and help us reach 50,000!