Donations for Warm Woolies
The following is a letter we received from Warm Woolies requesting yarn donations from our Peace Fleece community. For those of you with extra yarn looking for a home, please visit their website and consider a donation. Warm Woolies mission is to provide warm, hand-knit wool clothing to children living in extreme poverty. Their volunteers knit for children in orphanages in eastern Europe and China, and for children on tribal reservations in South Dakota. They can always use wool yarn and needles! The IRS has recognized Warm Woolies as a 501(c)(3) so any donation of materials would be tax exempt.
Warm Woolies 5572 E. Mansfield Ave. Denver, CO 80237 Contact: Kimberly Turnbow 1-303-639-9391 email: www.warmwoolies.org
Dear Peter, Thank you for you kind message. You and I actually spoke in the spring of 2003. At that time, Warm Woolies was just an idea I had to celebrate the first anniversary of a very good friend's adoption of two boys from Russia. My plan was to knit 100 pieces of warm wool clothing to send to a Russian orphanage. You offered a number of helpful insights and encouragement and have often been in my thoughts as Warm Woolies has grown. In 2003, with the help of two other knitters, Warm Woolies delivered 507 hats, vests, and slippers to orphanages in Russia and Lithuania. This year we are on track to knit 1,400 pieces of warm wool clothing and have about 25 volunteer knitters. Warm Woolies provides wool yarn, needles, and instruction to all of its local (Denver) knitters. We're working with international adoption agencies to deliver items to Belarus and Russia. We have a volunteer who is hand-carrying about a hundred pieces to China this summer. And we're also working with folks on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. This fall, I'll be returning to the Rosebud reservation for a week to teach knitting to survivors of domestic violence and the staff at the White Buffalo Calf Woman battered women's shelter. Warm Woolies will also set up a knitting workshop there with yarn, needles, patterns and instruction materials. This will be a "pilot" program that I am very interested in expanding if possible. Ideally, we would set up workshops in the orphanages for the older children in Russia and Belarus. I'd be very interested in you thoughts on the concept and possible implementation. Is there a convenient time when I might call you to discuss? And, to respond to your generous offer, Warm Woolies would love being mentioned on your website! We can always use wool yarn, needles, and children's patterns -- both for our volunteers to use and to stock any workshops. We are in the process of developing our web site and hope to be up in the next couple of weeks. Maybe when we're up, Peace Fleece could carry a link to the Warm Woolies site? In the meanwhile, you could use our logo. (I'll forward a copy under separate email so you can take a look.) We would be pleased to carry a link to your web page, with your permission, and recommend Peace Fleece yarn to our knitters. Please let me know if you need any additional information about Warm Woolies and how you would like to proceed on the website piece. I appreciate your support and look forward to hearing from you. Warm regards, Kimberly Turnbow Executive Director p.s. The IRS has recognized Warm Woolies as a 501(c)(3) so any donation of materials would be tax exempt. We acknowledge every donation in writing and our administrative costs are less than 5% of our budget.