Crocheting and knitting for charity is an act of love

Crocheting and knitting for charity, especially for children in need, is not only an act of love but makes a difference. There are many millions of abandoned children, AIDS orphans and child-headed families in southern Africa, who live in dire poverty. They lack love, shelter, food, education and warmth.

We support the hard working children's charities, like Hotel Hope, who provide the first four of their basic human needs. Your crocheting and knitting for charity can provide the last, warmth.

Your contribution of squares to this crochet and knitting project adds to the many thousands of 8"/20cm squares from around the world, which continue to be joined into blankets and distributed to these children.

As a children's charity, knit-a-square has two goals:

1. To make these children warm with blanket, hats, vests and pullovers.

2. To raise awareness of this mostly hidden human tragedy.

By contributing, you not only make an abandoned child or AIDS orphan warm, you help too, to bring the plight of the children to the attention of whoever you tell or ask to join with you in this crochet and knitting project.

Keeping a child with HIV AIDS warm is important
Keeping a child warm makes a difference. We all understand how awful it is to be cold, but many of us have not experienced the misery of being cold all night, every night, hungry, and perhaps sick as well.

Many of the children are themselves infected by HIV AIDS. As it is an auto immune disease, keeping warm helps their ability to stay well.

Perhaps the most heart-warming outcome of your efforts is that the children receive a hand-made gift which not only keeps them warm but sends them a message, from the world, that their plight is known.

We have a lofty goal for 2009: 5,000 blankets. We are making the blankets as follows:

6 x 4 (24) smallest
(babies to about 3 yrs)

7 x 5 (35) medium (4 – 7 yrs)

8 x 5 (40) large (8 – 15 yrs)

That is an average of 27.75 squares per blanket, so to achieve 5,000 blankets we need 137,500 squares!

As your squares arrive, they are collected, sorted and bundled into blanket packs by the ladies of Soweto Comfort Club.

They then organise sewing and distribution days which are recorded in the monthly magazine 'Square Circle' , so you can see and enjoy the results of your wonderful work. You can subscribe for free in the form under the menu bar.

Here are the instructions for our knitting for charity project and the postal instructions too.

We look forward to welcoming you to our warm knit-a-square community in the Square Circle Forum to share our monthly challenges and our friendship and commitment to this shared goal.