Fundraising Next Wednesday and Thursday

Come and support us next Wednesday and Thursday in the student centre! You can 'buy' a quilt square for a toonie which will then go towards the micro-finance NGO Drombaya. Although we will accept any donation big or small. Buying squares guarantees that we will sew that square into a quilt that will then go to a person in need. The more you buy the more we sew!!

Remember that is Feb 9-10!

Newspaper

We got interviewed today!! By we I mean Sewing Patches - Sowing Progress. Cat and Ashley represented us and told them our story. It went very well and if you parlez Francais you can pick up a copy of La Rontonde on January 31st, 2011 around campus or checkout the website. Cat also has an interview lined up with The Fulcrum our english campus paper. Fantastic!

Cutting Party Two

We had another cutting party. After missing Courtney at the LRC by minutes, we finally were able to get our act together and go to the main library and cut blocks. It seems that meeting to cut as a group is difficult as this semester is very busy. Courtney, Brita, Elyse and I were able to get another 36 blocks cut and ready to go.

Quilt Number One

Okay, so I finished a quilt and as we had discussed as a group - I tried to cut up the scraps and stuff the blocks.  I apparently put too much in each one as the entire thing was so heavy! It would be a great way to make a mattress though.

Photo of very puffy blocks!

Finished quilt notice the lumps...

Quilt #1 finished

So I unpicked the stitching and cut the scraps even smaller so I could put less in each one. Theoretically this was a good idea but it seems that the scraps clump together making the quilt kind of lumpy. Warm but lumpy. 

Cutting Party!!

At 4pm our group, minus a few late comers, met int the Learning Resource Centre to cut fabric. Bella and Courtney had picked up the fabric from le bras- SIDA, sorted through it all and brought 4 large and heavy boxes to meet us. We cut blocks and cut blocks and cut some more.

Ashley and Cat practised sewing and completed one row of six blocks. After seeing the length in an actual sample we all decided to change the dimensions of the quilt. We also took into account that people outside would want to wrap the quilt around them, and so the width would have to be longer. Our new dimension for the quilts are: 6 blocks x 6 blocks. Which means 36 blocks for each person to take home, and sewing.

Again we cut more blocks.

The highlight of the evening was Courtney and Bella's matching outfits that they modelled for us. I will hunt down a picture for the blog here. What a productive evening!

Our Logo

Thank you Courtney!

A Flurry of Action!

So this is amazing! I have never worked on a project that has come together so easily. I say easily but really it has been because of a lot of hard work on the part of all of my group mates. Brita and I met after class on Friday and hammered out a tentative schedule and tasks that needed to be done. This included:

• get sewing machines for everyone involved - next friday
• organize advertising and printing of advertising materials
• organize clothing donation bins and collection
• organize booth set up to collect funds
• talk to Drombaya about goals and find out more information
• make t-shirts that we can all wear to promote our cause
• create materials to be used at fundraising booth

We also had a name: Sewing Patches - Sowing Progress. Later that evening, Brita sent over a rough copy of the proposal and soon it worked it's way through the group for editing. I contacted many people on sites like Kijiji and Craigslist to possible sell their sewing machine for a lower amount. Group members asked around posted on Facebook, and we did it. Before the following class everyone had a sewing machine.

Bella had found an organization that was willing to donate used clothing that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Courtney had a poster created. Cat had contacted newspapers about running our story. Elyse had talked to people about setting up our booths. Ashley had worked magic and somehow got us printing.

The decided action was to pick up fabric on Monday and have a cutting party. Where everyone would learn to use their new sewing machines. That's right people would be sewing for the first time!!

Drombaya

Tonight, we had a fantastic meeting with Bonnie Burlton about her micro-finance NGO called Drombaya. Check out the amazing work that she and her partner are doing in Africa. She told us numerous stories like the one below.

We are so happy to help support a former Bed student who is really taking action!

A Proposal

Mission - to bring together local and global initiatives by providing a local youth shelter with handmade quilts while fundraising for a global NGO.

Description and rationale  

Our social action project, Sewing Patches - Sowing Progress, is aimed at tying together the local and global communities.  We will be creating 35 quilts, out of donated old clothing, for a youth shelter as a way to give back to our local community. Each quilt block will be sold in order to fundraise for a grassroots micro-finance NGO based out of sub-Saharan Africa, as a way of giving back to our global community. 

In this project we are also seeking to minimize the amount of solid waste being sent to landfills in Canada, by reusing items of clothing that are considered to be trash by their current owners, instead of purchasing new fabric. In 2002, Canadian households produced 12 million tonnes of residential solid waste, of which 18 percent was labelled other which, included old clothing (Stats Canada, 2005). That means approximately 2 160 000 tonnes, or roughly 196 364 empty school buses, of solid waste including used clothing is thrown out each year, and sadly this figure is on the rise. This social action project gives us the opportunity to basically turn trash into cash for global aid, and raise some awareness about the merits of recycling clothing. 

We selected this project based on the previous efforts of, a few of the group members when they recycled old clothing into mittens for homeless persons within Ottawa. They had found that cutting the patterns of the mittens was very time consuming and lowered the amount of mittens that they could make. Also, while making mittens different hand sizes had to be accounted for when sewing the mittens. Quilts were selected because the pattern for the quilt could be very simple to cut out, allowing for more time spent sewing. We also thought that quilts are useful, comforting, and depending on use can last for many years and therefore avoid landfills for many years. 

A micro-finance organization was selected because we feel it empowers the local community to become active participants in determining their own future.  Also, the money given to micro-finance organizations is constantly reused, after it is repaid. So, a small amount of money given can potentially still have a great impact. The grassroots organization Drombaya was selected as it is based in Ottawa, and co-founded by a University of Ottawa Faculty of Education graduate. Drombaya, while small, partners with civil society organizations (CSOs) to ensure that micro-finance is available for those who need it. By raising money for Drombaya, along with creating quilts, our group will create awareness about micro-finance and the importance it holds in helping those in extreme poverty, while allowing them to maintain their freedoms and choose their livelihoods. 

Social Action project objectives

• Raise a minimum of $500 for the micro-finance NGO, Drombaya.
• Create awareness within the University of Ottawa campus community about micro-finance.
• Donate 35 quilts to an organization with the need for quilts, either a homeless shelter or retirement home.
• Raise awareness about how clothing can be reused.  

List of deliverables for midterm appraisal

• All clothing donations will be collected,
• Advertising about the action project and NGO will be created and distributed,
• Organization where quilts will be donated will be selected,
• All fabric will be cut,
• The group will learn to sew, or improve their sewing skills. 
• ½ of the quilts will be completed.

List of deliverables for final report

• Minimum of $500 will be raised for Drombaya,
• Money will have been donated to Drombaya,
• Quilts will have been donated to a local organization,
• Informational poster about the social action project will be completed.

Tentative schedule

January 7, 2011 – First planning meeting
January 10, 2011 – Fabric donation collection, supply compiling
January 14, 2011 – Donation bin approval completed and creating/implementation of advertising materials completed, sewing machines collected for all group members
January 19, 2011 – Fundraising booths approval done, and in action
Feb. 4, 2011 – Last day for donation bin clothing collection
Feb. 4, 2011 – Organization for quilt donation selected and has been met with, in person.
Feb. 28, 2011 – Last day for monetary donations
March 7, 2011 – Quilts are completely sewn and completed
March 11, 2011 – Money is donated to Drombaya.

Pink Floyd and Education

Yesterday, in class we were asked, "what is the purpose of education/schooling?" We then watched the music video Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd. When the video first came on many students in my lecture hall started singing along, and if they weren't I am almost positive that they knew the words and if not had heard it once before. The singing stopped as I believe my classmates like myself were examining the images that the video portrays. It surprised me how differently I thought of this video when I was asked to re-examine it from the perspective of education. It seems like up until that point I hadn't really given it much thought, I am sad to say.

The next video we watched was of Sir Ken Robinson - 'Changing Education Paradigms'. I can't begin to summarize how much I loved this video and agree with it. However, it can be demoralizing as a pre service teacher heading into that same system. What we need to do is question how we will teach within that system. What room do we have to maneuver?

Today we were asked to form a group and developed a social action project for our community service learning component of the course. We did. That group consisted of Bella Flammia, Courtney Stiles, Ashley Fisher, Brita Goldie, Cat Costa, Elyse Snell and myself - Dawn Collins. Based on an earlier project that a few of us worked on we developed an idea. Stay tuned for more details....