#WinterWoolDrive: Donation of knitwear for babies made to child welfare

As part of the Advertiser’s Winter Wool Drive, we recently donated bundles of clothing to Greater Boksburg Child Welfare.

The donated items included knitted children’s scarves, beanies, gloves, blankets, jerseys, and other clothing articles.

Vanessa Naidoo-Pillay, the director of Boksburg Child Welfare, expressed the organisation’s gratitude to everyone involved for their support. “We are most gracious that we will be able to provide our babies within the organisation with their very own hand-knitted item of clothing.”

Pillay pointed out that the donated knitwear and received blankets will be divided for their three offices (Boksburg, Vosloorus and Reiger Park), and it will be used for removal of a newborn baby’s from hospitals where the biological mother chooses to place their baby for adoption or newborn babies who are found abandoned and taken into the hospital by the police.

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“In these circumstances, the baby does not have many clothing items except for what the hospital may provide during the discharge, as well as what we at Boksburg Child Welfare get from donated clothing.

“We will also use the items for babies that may need to be removed from the community due to abandonment, orphan-hood, neglect or abuse.

“We do take into consideration that clients of low socio-economic circumstances come into our offices requesting baby clothes and blankets and we will also hand them out after a screening process is completed.

“Thank you so much once again for the donation of warm baby clothes, it really makes a difference to the babies we serve.”

Winter Wool Drive

The wool drive is an annual charity initiative to get wool donations, which in turn gets handed over to individuals and organisations who knit for the needy.

The completed handiwork is then distributed to various local charity organisations to benefit the underprivileged and our furry friends at the SPCAs in winter.

Advertising manager at the Advertiser, Elize Kluyts, who co-ordinates the project, said she is really excited at the support the project has been getting from the community, including local businesses.

“The support we received, this year, in particular, has been phenomenal. We received a lot of knitted garments donations and I want to thank our generous and compassionate donors, as well as colleagues at Caxton Local Media who took out their time to knit the garments while in lockdown,” said Kluyts.

Caxton East/South general manager Linda Pretorius also thanked all involved and those who support the charity project to provide the needy with the much-needed winter clothing. “Thank you very much to the Boksburg Angels,” said Pretorius.

Donations of knitted items, wool and needles still accepted

Those eager to participate can either still donate wool and knitting needles or grab some wool at home and get knitting.

All quantities, textures, and colours of wool donations are welcome.

Drop your donations of wool off at the Caxton Local Media offices, 20 Sydney Road, Ravenswood, or at: @The Bistro (Boksburg Retail Park), Medleigh Pharmacy (The Square Centre), East End Dry Cleaners & Laundry (141 North Rand Road), Eyeland Optometrist (shop 17E East Rand Mall), Hecker Nursery (1 Kirschner Road) and Atlas SPAR (Atlas Mall).

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