August Events

I hope you are able to see at least one of Patience Munjeri's performances while she's in Eugene. We got together and chatted with her last week, and she treated us to her wonderful mbiri music.

Patience  told us a bit about her life, her music, her community in Zimbabwe, and the orphaned kids at the school where she teaches.  These are the girls receiving our kits.  Patience said that those who received the first batch of kits have not missed any school since!  Fantastic!  We've provided 115 and have about a hundred to go, to provide for all of the girls and teachers currently needing them.

We received this note from Maggie Donahue, of the Kutsinhira Cultural Arts Center, which brought Patience to Eugene this summer:    "Thank you to everyone who came to meet Patience Munjeri from Zimbabwe.  She was touched by the obvious interest everyone has in the girls she teaches at Chinhoyi High School.  The girls love the hygiene kits and we appreciated the commitment Days for Girls has to getting more of them into the hands of the girls who are orphaned.  A special thank you goes to Sue Cote, Michelle and Kathy who made beautiful bags out of cloth dyed in Zimbabwe, to help fund the distribution.  We look forward to future collaboration between Kutsinhira Cultural Arts Center and Days for Girls."

Maggie has been the one finding transportation to Zimbabwe for our kits.  We just sent our second batch (50) with a friend of hers earlier this month.  If you hear of anyone traveling to Zimbabwe, willing to carry some more kits, please let me know.

The bags she refers to are so appealing, and made to hold African instruments.  The ones in the photo below are also perfectly sized for iPads and other tablets.

I also caught Patience at her Saturday Market gig this past weekend.   Her future performances and presentations are detailed on the Kutsinhira website.

Many of us have been taking advantage of the Back-to-School sales on girls' underwear.  I only saw the best prices online once, and they only had size 12 (and 4).  I stocked up, to put it mildly.  We won't need any 12s for awhile.

There have been some wonderful prices (under $6. for a 12-pack) available at Target and Walmart, and we're pretty good at clearing the shelves in our most requested sizes.  The stores haven't been having the generous inventory that they did last year.  Last year I was able to fill a shopping cart in one visit, but now it's just a handful of packages.  But Patty offered to stop at Target Stores as she drove to Washington a couple of weeks ago, and brought us back many packages.  

If you come across bargain on girls' briefs (the only style DFG is wanting us to use now), our most needed sizes now are, in order, 14, 10, and 16.  Target's ad for this week is 12-packs of briefs for $5.99.  That ad also has a coupon for $5 off if you buy 3 Fruit of the Loom packs. There are other coupons online, and those of you with a Target Card can get 5% more off,  I believe, plus I understand that you can designate a nonprofit to receive some percentage too.  Target replenishes their stock by every Monday, Wednesday and Friday opening.

Given a choice, we try to avoid fabrics with prints depicting animals, people, camouflage, peace signs, weapons, religion or holidays, glam, or contain words.  Most packages contain a number of whites and some have the taboo prints.  Just do your best--we'll deal with it creatively, swapping and dying!

Patty, the super underwear shopper mentioned above, also volunteers for Bags of Love.  Their underwear requirements aren't as stringent as ours are, so we're doing some swapping (being creative)!  Some of those cute animal prints and too-light-for-DFG panties were traded and will be happily received by Lane County girls.

Tonight we had the assistance of the young women's group at a Bethel Area church helping us with some of the many non-sewing tasks that are a vital part of kit making.  These  twelve girls cheerfully drew the rounded corners that our sergers will follow as they finish the edges of liners.  They also sorted hundreds of pairs underwear into three groups within each size: OK as is, need to be dyed, and prints not acceptable, and removed the Scotch tape on each pair.  A time consuming task--more fun when you're doing it with friends.  Thank you, girls!  I hope to meet with you again!

If you're still with me, I'd like to share a link I received from DFG headquarters about how the Nepal earthquake affected women.  And another one, about taking the shame out of periods.

Let's meet Patience

I hope you can join us at 3:00 pm Thursday, August 20 (that's tomorrow!) at Our Sewing Room for an opportunity to meet Patience Chaitezvi Munjeri, a musician who teaches at the school in Zimbabwe where we've sent two batches of kits.  She's in Eugene to share her music, and would like to meet the Days for Girls seamstresses while she's here.  Join us for cookies, tea, and a bit of music.

The Honest Company has just launched a line of tampons made with organic cotton.  At the same time they've partnered with Days for Girls to support our efforts in Uganda to enable women to earn an income by sewing and selling feminine hygiene kits in their own communities.  The company is also helping domestically by donating their products to at-risk women in Edmonds, Washington, and they plan to expand this project to other communities.

Best prices of the year?

It looks like this is the beginning of the best prices of the year for underwear.

Walmart, Shopko and Target all have 9-packs and 12-packs at greatly reduced prices.  The 12-packs are the best deal, but the others are also much cheaper than usual.  We're lucky in Oregon not to have to add sales tax.  Per-pair prices near 50¢ are fantastic!

Walmart has a 12-pack of Fruit of the Loom briefs for $5.86.

At Shopko, Fruit of the Loom 9-packs are buy one, get one free.  Plus I read that there's a Senior discount today.  I don't know if that's every Wednesday.

Target has 9-packs and 12-packs for the same price.  I think the price range for the 12-packs is $5.99 to $6.50.  Both are way cheaper than usual.  Until August 8, there's also a coupon (on the website and in last Sunday's paper) for $5. off when you buy three Fruit of the Loom items.  

The problem is that their inventory was low when I looked at all three stores, although Walmart seems to have larger quantities.  Target told me their inventory is updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.  And these packs/prices aren't currently on their websites, although they were last year, so maybe I need patience.

If you are out shopping for underwear for DFG, please keep in mind that briefs are the style that we use.  The sizes we need are about 80%--90% 10s and 12s.  We use just a few 14s.  And, we need to avoid undies whose prints depict people, animals (butterflies are OK), weapons, camouflage, or include words.  It makes it more of a challenge, for sure.

Please join us at our August 16 workday at Our Sewing Room.  We're there from 10 am to 5 pm.  Come for as long as you can.  A few sergers and sewing machines are available to borrow, but most of us bring our own.  If you're bringing a sewing machine, please bring an empty bobbin.  Also handy--scissors, seam ripper, and name tag.