Break in Transmission - Service will resume in January

(now who is old enough to know what that means?)

Good morning lovely DfG ladies, 

It is with HUGE regret that I need to advise that ALL DfG activities for the month of December are to be cancelled. You can imagine how gutted I am as this upcoming volunteer day was to be our great "pack" day. 

Currently I am in hospital, which was quite unexpected, as I am having some neck and spine issues. The great news is that I will most likely return home in next day or two, however I will be unable to do much at all. I have limited neck movement and can not lift anything nor sit at the sewing machine or a computer for any long periods. Besides that my brain is la-la-mushy.

I truly did consider going ahead with our volunteer day, and the fair tomorrow, and the sewing classes but taking a "supervisor" (lol) role but to be honest getting ready for these events I need to pull things out of the very many boxes in the DfG room and on the medication I am on at the moment I just can't get things straight in my head (haha now I know some of you think I am a muddle head like that all the time!!!! but this time I have an excuse ). 

Every now the universe comes along and gives us a little wake-up call about our life and health. Well Ms. Universe has rightly whooped my butt this time and YES I am now listening ;-)

I love you ladies, and that is not the pethidine talking, and I look forward to a very productive January together. 

xxx Cloda 

Hi Ladies, my sincere apologies for the very late notice but today's sewing day is cancelled. Off to the doctor this morning for some pain relief from some muscle spasms that are rendering me useless. So sorry gals.

Crazy Busy but it is all Good Fun

Last weekend I was in Mumbai trying in vain to find a mill that could produce our flannel but sadly none of the leads panned out and I was not able to find flannel to meet our quality standards. Not to worry I still purchased a bit of cotton anyway. (Really you didn't expect me to go to a fabric souk and not buy!!).

Yesterday we had a table at the WGO Winter Bazaar, and thank you to the ladies who dropped by to say hi and a special thank you to lovely Nalini who helped me out on the table spreading the word about DfG. The reception we got from ladies was fantastic and I think we may have found a new volunteers.

Monday 28th we are sewing bags to sell at the MWF Church Christmas fair on Saturday 3rd December. This is an all or nothing day, foot to the floor, scissors sharpened and ready to slice, sergers flying at full speed kind of day! We start at 9.30am, bring a travel mug for your coffee as no open cups allowed near the fabric gals. Using the same bag pattern as DfG just in funky prints to sell so we can buy more fabric (insert mad woman evil laugh here). This all out madness will happen at my house in Atheiba, just behind al fair and we kick off at 9.30am until 1pm. Please send me a message if you can attend and what your "talent" is. You ladies rock my days! Thanks

And for Panagiota, Ann, and Lisa ... 

The 29th we have the TAISM group volunteer event. And we will also have the rescheduledTAISM moms sewing morning with Paula.

We will be participating in the Muscat Women's Fellowship Christmas Bazaar on Saturday 3rd December at the Ghala Church hall. Please come along and say hi.

And finally we will have our December volunteer morning on Sunday 4th December at Bhaja Hall as usual. Kicking off at 8.45am until 12.30pm. I am pretty excited as will be doing our first Kit Packing and aim to have 100 kits packed and ready to go by the end of the morning. We will still be sewing as usual too.

On the 6th December we are having another TAISM volunteer event which will be the last before the winter break.

After the 6th I will slow down my DfGMO speed so that I can spend some time with my family over their winter break holidays. Thanks for your understanding.

Many thanks for all your support.

Public Holiday Announced

The holiday for National Day has been declared as Wednesday 23rd November and Thursday 24th November (great for those celebrating Thanksgiving!). 

Ladies looks like we need to reschedule our sewing day! I am going to suggest Monday 28th from 9.30am until 1pm. This will be to cut and sew gift bags to sell at the Church Fair on the 3rd December. Not a lot of wiggle room there but we will do it ;-) Please let me know if you can make it.

Many Hands do Lighten the Load.

A very productive morning at DfGMO HQ preping for the sew @home shield kits and for the next volunteer day on the 4th. Thanks Ladies, great work and great laughs as usual.

We have another sew@DFGMO HQ on the 24th November (as long as it is not called as a holiday) so we can cut and sew bags to sell at the craft fair to raise money for DfGMO.

We will also be selling some lovely little gifts ... Very limited stock.

a VERY busy week!

Wow, what a busy week we just had.

Sunday 6th November we had our Volunteer day and WOW are we excited that next month we are going to ASSEMBLE 150 kits! Next volunteer day is Sunday 4th December please mark it in your diaries.

On Monday we had a TAISM Mom's sewing morning at Paula's house. This was the pilot for a morning session and it went very well. Thank you to the lovely mom's who came and made bags, cut pockets and serged / overlocked liners. We were so super busy that I forgot to take some photos!

Tuesday afternoon / evening was the second TAISM meet up. We were very busy getting pockets cut, ironed and stitched ready for the upcoming shields. Thankfully we had enough hands on deck to also get some drawstring bags threaded. It was a very productive session. We will be meeting next on Tuesday 29th 3.45pm in the HS commons.

Also the very active, social and lovely "Latino Ladies" were busy getting many bags made. These ladies know how to sew and iron like there is no tomorrow, they are like machines I tell you! Thank you ladies. Also some of the ladies attend a Yoga class and we were very honoured and grateful to receive a 50 rial donation from the class - such love, thank you so much. We will be purchasing some ladies size underwear with that money. 

And now it is time for an update on how we are going towards our goal of 400 kits for Lebanon (we will update the 100 kits for Uganda at a later stage).

I am only listing fully completed components that I have here in stock ...

Drawstring Bags  - we have 260  that is 65%
(I have 61 yet to thread that will bring it 80%)

Shields - we have  180 that is 22.5%
(I have 98 to be snapped that will bring it to 34.75%)

Washcloths  - we have 410 that is 102%

Liners - we have 1,064 that is 33.25%
(another 100+ in the works)

Ziplocs - we have 1000 that is 125%

Underwear - we have 1152 that is 144%
(we will still need to get more because we have mostly girls sizes and the Lebanon kits will need more women's sizes).

Soaps - we have 1400 that is 350%
(we are still collecting them in case we have any extra weight allowance we will bring more to distributions).

All in all a fantastic effort in a working period of 6 months! I am so proud of each and every person who is contributing to our goal. 

On a final note can I please ask if you are traveling and happen to see a travel size sewing kits in your hotel room, could you please collect them as we are thinking to bring some along with us on distributions so that girls and women in the field can use them at a later date just in case their kit needs a minor repair.

Thank you , to each and every one of you, for the amazing work you put in for our Days for Girls teams. I am proud and humbled. xxxx

Second Muscat Guides

On Wednesday I had the absolute pleasure to join the Second Guides Muscat troop for their meeting and share a little about Days for Girls with them. 

They are a lovely group of young ladies who were very engaged and seemed to really understand the impact that making a kit can have on a girl's life. I think the initial thought of missing 5 days of school a month seemed appealing to them ( it would to my kids too, lol) but when they understood the long term implications you could se their minds working away. I think the idea of being married at 14 with a baby soon to follow did not appeal to them nor did not having the opportunity to go to college or find a job later. 

These wonderful 8 young ladies and their lovely troop leaders then helped by threading our completed  drawstring bags. They got the hang of it very quickly and between them accomplished 40 bags in 30 minutes - great job! I was telling the girls as we were threading them that each bag they are touching will be in the hands of a girl or woman next year and that it will make her life so much better. Their smiles were priceless. 

They also donated a large bag of soaps which was so lovely of them. 

Thank you Second Muscat Guides, you gals rock! 

The TAISM Days for Girls team is up and running!

This past two weeks has been crazy busy and I apologise for the delay in getting some of these posts up, it just doesn't appear that the clock is willing to slow down for me ;-) 

On the 18th of October we had the "kick-off" for the new TAISM team. It is a group of TAISM parents / students / and faculty from the school who are donating their time to join the team and make kits. 

 

The faculty sponsors are Cheryl Brown and Keya Lahiri who are helping from the sewing and awareness / donation / fund raising side.  The parent leaders are Amaranta Buendia and myself. 

We had our initial information session on the 18th which was very quickly followed on the 20th with a Bake Sale. The Bake Sale raised 310 rials which was completely mind blowing. We are so grateful to the parents who donated baked goods, and helped sell, and the students that came along to sell the goodies.  We need about 6 rials to complete each kit. 

This past Tuesday was our first "live" session. We were teaching the process of making the Drawstring Bags. I was so happy to see the students enthusiastic and having a great time while tracing, cutting, ironing and sewing.  

Going forward we are proposing to change the timings a little. We will start at 3.45pm (I will be there 3.30pm setting up) until 6pm. That will allow the high schoolers that have to leave on the 5.10pm bus enough time to really get into their tasks. We will finish sewing and clean up at 5.45pm.  We also hope that more ES Moms who are waiting for their children to finish ASA's might be able to join us. 

Upcoming Dates... (These dates are not set in stone as we are trying to work around school commitments please check with us prior)

November 8th  & 29th (was 22nd but it clashed with HS Band)

December 13th (6th is ES Noon Dismissal Rainbow Day)

Winter Break

January 10th & 24th

February 7th & 21st

March 14th & 21st (March 7th Board Meeting in HS Commons)

Spring Break 

In addition to that we are proposing two mornings a month which will most likely be at somebody's house as we are not sure of any available space we could use at the school during the day. Please let Amaranta, Paula Bowlin or myself know if the morning times might suit you better. 

The Days for Girls TAISM team have a goal of 100 kits which will be distributed to the Michelle & Julia Hoffman Memorial Children's Home and the Salem Home in Uganda before the summer break next year.  

While these homes don't have the issues of girls missing school it does mean that by having these kits they don't need to allocate funds for disposable pads and they don't have the problems of waste disposal etc. 

It is heart warming to see our Chapter increasing here in Oman. Ideally we want to get established in the local market, all in good time my friends, all in good time. Stay tuned! 

Revlon LOVE IS ON 2016 Challenge - so close.

Yesterday it was like watching a drawn out horse race. I kept refreshing the Revlon page to see the updates. Days for Girls had fluctuated between 3rd , 2nd and 1st place over the past few weeks but come the last few hours we were bumped out of 2nd place and the Basser Centre and Cancer Research Institute battled it out for the lead position. They were getting $10,000 donations constantly and of course it made it a two way race only. Basser Centre were hanging on until the last few minutes when the Institute did a slam dunk and it was all over.

Days for Girls International raised just over $750,000 plus the 3rd place prize of $75,000, it means worldwide that $825,000 is going to help a lot of girls / women. 

Regardless of the winers of the overall completion I want to reflect on a few things that stand out. Firstly a huge congratulations to our Muscat Oman Days for Girls team donors. You raised  $2213 USD (about 852 Omani Rial). That will allow us to purchase materials for a further 142 kits. This amount included 700 rial of the 790 raised from the Dress Sale. 

Overall from all the charities in the challenge there was a total of $6,542,251 (OMR 2,515,766) raised. Wow,  a great effort. 

Another observation is that Days for Girls has only been around since 2008 and it was up against two HUGE players in the Cancer Research fields who have been around for a very long time. They have some wonderful donors who work tirelessly to raise funds and also some donors with generous deep pockets. I am not sure on the overall statistics yet but I wouldn't be suprised if we have a higher ratio of donors to funds and that speaks volumes for Days for Girls all over the world. 

Let's face it, we would have liked to have won and that $1,000,000 would have had a huge impact but lets just take a moment to look at the other charities. ALL of them are doing amazing work and there certainly is no resentment, just a lot of love knowing this money will make a difference everywhere. 

Thank you again for your kindness and generosity in helping support us through this great experience - the REVLON LOVE IS ON 2016 Challenge. See you next year ;-) 

A VERY Successful Dress Sale!

We are so grateful to Julie Rouse and Jessica Wittmann for arranging another dress sale and I am very pleased to announce that the dress sale raised ...... DRUM ROLL.... 790 rials! (USD $2051). 

That will allow us to make a further 130 kits for girls / women to manage their periods with dignity and health. THANK YOU. 

A LOT of work goes into setting this up. Meeting the sellers and donators, storing dresses, transporting them etc. 

Huge thanks to all the ladies who put in so much hard work getting the venue ready, helping on the day, and cleaning up afterwards. Luisha thank you for once again hosting the sale in your home. 

There are so many people to thank, please know that your efforts ate truly appreciated. All the other volunteers who baked, supplied items, and who helped on the day to make it a very successful day. Thank you for selling and donating dresses and handbags. 

And of course thank you for coming along and buying!

Days for Girls Expeditions

Has volunteering for Days for Girls given you a taste of giving and you can not get enough? Have you ever considered going on an expedition?

I wanted to share with you today the Days for Girls International Expedition link on their main page. They have an upcoming expedition to Nepal , which I believe might already even be filled due to the high demand. The great news is that there will another one in Uganda in the first half of next year and I am very keen to find about that one. You can also fill in their ONLINE FORM to get updates on upcoming expeditions.

Below are some images from the page to give you a little indication of what is involved. Expeditions are self paid and work out around $3000 USD (approx. 1155 OMR)  (plus your flights , visa etc).

It looks like a great opportunity to travel, learn, love and give. 

I am thinking this Christmas I might ask my family for a gift amount towards the cost of an expedition. It seems like a great life experience. 

Thanks for stopping by ....