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KOGO (Knit One Give One)
 www.knitonegiveone.org

The project runs from March to August each year
(September to February: If you are an all-year-round knitter please store any finished garments for next year!)
Various Pharmacies act as collection points for the knitted items
(Complete list on the KOGO website)

Priceline Pharmacy, Shop 2 Yarra Plaza, Market Square, Geelong

Nova Pharmacy, Shop 66, Bacchus Marsh Village, Bacchus Marsh

Reports
from Ros and the KOGO team

Excerpts from their latest newsletter and newsletters past …

 

September 2011

It is has been a long cold winter but it is now is officially over!

I am thrilled to let you know that we have reached our target and have distributed 448 baby gift packs and 25,000 items this year- bringing our total to 89,000 since we started in 2004! We now supply over 100 agencies - 20 more than last year. The feedback from the agencies is that our garments are really appreciated by their clients and it gives them great moral support to know that the community cares about their situation.

I would like to thank all my amazing volunteer knitters – not only for the quantity of garments that you have produced but also for the love, time and effort that you put into making such beautiful garments to help support people in need.

July / August 2011

What a cold winter it has been this year. Thanks to you - all my wonderful volunteer knitters - we are helping to bring some warmth and comfort to many people in need. We have distributed over 15,000 items so far this year. This is about 2,500 more that the equivalent time last year.

Several of the welfare agencies that we supply have asked for extra deliveries already because of the very cold weather and also the increase in hardship in the community. We are supplying all our regular agencies and we have also managed to get some new contacts to be able to help out regional areas that were affected by the floods (after years of drought)

We receive such positive feedback from the recipients of our garments. This is usually via the welfare agencies but I have had 2 actual KOGO recipients take the time and trouble to look up the KOGO website (which they got from the labels on the garments) and email to thank us personally for what they were given. One was from a young mum who received a gift pack. The other was from a Big Issue seller who received a beanie and a pair of socks and said "that now her feet and her head will be warm".  It is very rewarding to get these messages. I must say that I am sometimes overwhelmed by the generosity of the time and effort that people put into the items that they make!

We are particularly in need of COT BLANKETS at the moment - we put these into the baby gift packs and are also send them to the Alannah and Madeline Foundation for inclusion in their Buddy Bags - they are distributing a total of 9,000 Buddy Bags in 2011, 1,800 of which will be in the 0-2 age group and they like to include a baby blanket in these.

I was talking to a new KOGO volunteer last week and telling her about the great demand for our baby gift packs. She told me that she can sew and quilt a cot blanket in one night and would those be suitable? I told her that would be great! Cot blankets need to be approximately 90cm x 1.2m (36” x 48”)

May 2011

The cold weather has started already and it looks like it is going to be a long cold winter. We have distributed 7000 items up to date this year and already one of the agencies has requested more items – as they had distributed nearly half the scarves and beanies that we had given them within the first week! So please keep those hand knits coming in!!

Currently we need:
  *scarves and beanies 
  *adult garments in darker plain colours
  *children’s garments as bright and patterned as you like
  *babies cardigans and beanies (some in boys’ colours!) but we have PLENTY of booties
  *children’s jumpers and jackets
  *cot blankets
  *fingerless gloves
  *slippers – look out for the new patterns on the website

April 2011

Thank you very much to those of you who came to the KOGO tram launch on Sunday April10th. Many of you have been knitting for KOGO for years and it was so nice to be able to put faces to the names! I have put some photos which were taken on the morning onto the website.

Welcome to the many new volunteers who have registered on the database after reading the article about KOGO in The Age on Tuesday 12th April. I was thrilled with the article because I felt that the reporter captured the essence of KOGO – it is a “whole community” project with volunteer knitters contributing to others who are less fortunate and doing it tough.

For those of you who may not have seen the article as well as our interstate knitters here is the link to the article http://m.theage.com.au/national/melbourne-life/click-go-the-needles-girls-click-click-click-20110411-1dayw.html

Thank you also to the people who have sent me the patterns for fingerless gloves and slippers. I have put the pattern for fingerless gloves on the website and the slipper/sock one will go on as soon as we have knitted up a “sample”.

We have distributed over 4,000 items already this year and we would like to reach a target of 25,000 by the end of winter.

Although we knitters like to knit in bright colours, it was pointed out to me by one of the welfare agencies that darker plain coloured beanies are much more practical for those who do not have a permanent roof overhead. However kids’ beanies can be as bright as you like. Football colours are very popular!

At the moment we have a great need for knitted children’s and babies’ clothes. We have had requests for over 350 baby gift packs (200 for Berry St alone). We like to put a cot blanket, cardigan, beanie, booties and knitted toy in each of these packs. Many of the women who are given these packs would otherwise have nothing new for their baby.

March 2011

Welcome to KOGO 2011. It is hard to believe that we are now in our 8th year of the KOGO project.  In 2010 we distributed over 21,300 items.

We can find a deserving “home” for any hand knit – whether it be for baby, child or adult!
However our market research has shown that the items that are the most needed are:

We have added some new patterns to the website including our own pattern for a “scoodie” (scarf combined with hood) which is very warm and particularly suitable for our teenage recipients (please knit in dark colours). It is for the more experienced knitter

October 2010

I am thrilled to let you know that we distributed 315 baby gift packs and 21,300 garments this year – bringing our total to 64,000 since we started in 2004!
All the items were distributed in Australia – mainly in Victoria with some distributions going to indigenous communities in Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Thanks to your generosity, kogo just gets bigger and bigger every year and we now supply almost 80 different agencies.

The agencies fall into the following broad categories:

April 2010

Just a couple of knitting requests:

We have an abundance of "T shaped" knitted baby and children jumpers but would love more baby cardigans, beanies, bootees and cot blankets.

If you are making our 8ply stocking stitch beanie, you do NOT need to have a fold over brim (just 10 rows of band is sufficient) - this also cuts knitting time and the amount of wool that you use.

October 2009

Thank you for your great contribution to kogo 2009! The unbelievable support of all our volunteer knitters has enabled us to collect 20,000 hand knitted items this year (bringing our overall total to 42,000 items) to help keep the most vulnerable in our community a little warmer during the very cold winter weather. Your contribution provided not only physical warmth but also emotional support to the recipients - it is very important for them to know that the community cares.

As most of you would know, this year as well as making scarves and beanies, we took on the task of making woollies and blankets for the Bushfire Survivors. We received lots of beautiful items and amongst these were heaps of babies’ clothes. We decided to use some of these garments to put together gift packs for “new mums”. These packs were given to disadvantaged mums by the Royal Women’s Hospital, Monash Medical Centre and various other family outreach programs. Many of these women would never have had anything new for their babies. As you can imagine, they have been really well received and much appreciated, so we will definitely put them on the agenda for 2010.If you are an all-year-round knitter please store any finished garments for next year!