Thanks to the incredible generosity of people who donated wool or knitted beanies for the Soukop Property Group’s Upper Highway beanie drive, over a thousand vulnerable children and disadvantaged adults have warm heads this winter.
Community members from the Shongweni Valley, Drakensberg, Hillcrest Hospital, CHOC and local orphanages have benefited from the drive.
It all started last year when avid knitter, Marion Parker (a sales associate for Soukop Upper Highway) put a pattern on Facebook with a post challenging friends to each knit a beanie in the hopes of having 50 by winter.
“There are so many people who just started knitting for us, and many who simply popped into our office to drop off beanies, leaving before we’d even had a chance to take their names. We have some people who have knitted over 100 beanies each, and the range of people – from housewives to pensioners to domestic workers – has left us humbled,” said Parker.
Parker recently visited CHOC (Childhood Cancer Foundation South Africa) at Albert Luthuli Hospital in Durban with Antonietta Alves, Soukop Upper Highway Estate Agent, and has committed to visiting CHOC once a month to teach the women there to knit.
“We donated 130 beanies to the children being treated for cancer, and I noticed how many mothers there were simply sitting and waiting for their children to be treated. If all those women could be taught to knit too, it would help them going forwards and make those hours of waiting at hospital more productive and bearable.”
For this project, Parker needs double yarn knitting wool and 4mm needles to be donated, which CHOC will keep and hand out to mothers who wanted to knit, and also volunteers who are interested in joining her in this project to help teach the mothers to knit.
“We were also told by staff at CHOC that the children would like scarves too, and those are even easier to knit than beanies.”
With the incredible support they received, Parker is encouraging the public to aim for 1 000 more beanies. Suggestions of organisations that need beanies are also welcome.
Due to the amazing response, Soukop then decided to expand its beanie drive to all the offices of Soukop nationwide.
“We are absolutely delighted with the response,” said Dina Soukop, CEO of Soukop Properties. “We call on friends nationwide to, where possible, donate wool, needles and – of course – knit. From now on, each and every Soukop office will be receiving beanies and allocating them to places where people are in need.”
Contact Soukop Upper Highway on 031 765 8533 or marion@soukop.co.za.
