Sewaid » Kirabati

Sewaid activity up-date August 2024

Tony Castley — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 23:53:56 +0000

Dear Sewaid Friends,

Kiribati Update

Erimeta has advised that they have started their third series of sewing lessons, and once again, they were sold out. From all reports, it appears to be going very well.

I have had an enquiry from Kiritimati Island (locally called Christmas Island), which is one of the Kiribati islands, 2,000 km away from Tarawa, pleading with us to send a training team to them. I told the lady (the wife of a United Church minister ) that we could not do that in the foreseeable future. However, I contacted Erimeta, and she says that they will eventually be able to roll the program out to the main islands, including Christmas Island.

This week, I sent the pallet of fabric down to the Sydney dock to be put in a DFAT container that will be shipped to Tarawa next week. It was good to get this away. I won’t bore you with the problems and costs we had trucking it to the wharf, but we got it there and on time!

David O’Toole, AMAK’s DFAT helper, is in Brisbane this week, and I sent him two parcels of stuff Erimeta asked for. The items were mainly rotary cutters and blades, scissors, lots of embroidery thread colours, lots of unpickers, and some sewing machine spare parts.

Timor Leste

The container with our fabric and machines arrived in Dili this week. The fabric will be distributed to all the Sewaid sewing groups. The shipment also included some new machines for Mira and Sister Sabina. Hopefully, this will keep them sewing for some time !

Congo DRC

SewAid has just paid the $2,100 six monthly rent for our workshop in Goma. We hope that eventually, we can obtain premises shared with other charities, schools or such like, so that we can avoid renting a building just for our sewing workshop. Initially, Penny was hoping that her computer training program would pay half the rent, but unfortunately, that didn’t work out. However, the school bag sewing program is starting to find some traction, and hopefully, sales and interest in this excellent program will continue to grow.

Uganda

We had lunch with Janepher Kintu, the School for Life Principal when she was in Sydney, and we again discussed the embroidery machine that they would like. Since then, we have had some new quotes from the sewing machine shops in Kampala and have also looked into sending one from here, but as yet, the costs are still a little beyond Sewaid’s current expenditure program. However, we will get them one eventually.

thanks and regards

Tony

Tony Castley OAM

SewAID

61 243843988

61 2414801888

tonyc@sewgroup.com

www.sewaid.com

www.sewgroup.com

Pallets of our fabric at the Rotary warehouse

Volunteer Sewing Teachers wanted for 2023 projects.

Tony Castley — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 03:46:15 +0000

We currently have some vacant positions for volunteer sewing teachers for the following projects:

Sydney – teaching sewing to refugees – February 2023

Kiribati – teaching sewing or crafts – May 2023

Uganda- teachers sewing teachers from across Africa – July 2023.

Priority will be given to teachers on our existing database but we would also like to hear from new volunteers.

Interested to learn more : please email Tony Castley at tonyc@sewgroup.com

New Shipments to Projects

Tony Castley — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 06:11:50 +0000

COVID -19 has made aid work in third world countries very difficult with no opportunity to actually make trips to our projects for more than one year.

However we have stayed in touch with our projects and this month we were able to finally despatch some shipments to them.

Sustainable Cambodia:

Our original shipment which was loaded into the REECH container more than a year ago, never left Sydney due to the inability to obtain duty free importation into Cambodia. Jenny Knight of REECH has been working tirelessly on this problem for over a year and has finally found a new agent in Cambodia who can make it happen,

So we had an opportunity to add some extra roles of PUL fabric for Days for Girls kits and finally this container has been shipped. I can barely remember what the original shipment was, although I know it was enough fabric and other parts, to make over 3,600 Days for Girls Kits.- and I recall Ryde Rotary kindly contributed $620.00 worth of flannelette to that original shipment. This time Sewaid added another $900 worth of PUL.

So SC should be very well stocked for DFG kit making when this shipment arrives. Thanks again to Jenny Knight for shipping this for us.

Kiribati

Again our proposed shipment to our project in Kiribati was delayed dues to DIK ( Donations in Kind ) Melbourne being closed through the COVID period.

However through Wendy Flahive we learned of a United Church container that was going and we were able to ship a pallet of sewing machines down to catch this container. Of the 29 new sewing machines shipped, 10 were purchased by Kindling Association – a Kiribati micro loans organisation and another 11 were donated by two CWA divisions.

The remaining 8 new sewing machines were donated by SewAid, these being just the start of our project to develop a new sewing training centre at the AMAK women’s Centre in Kiriabti. We hope to ship off another pallet of machines along with everything for the new sewing room with DIK Melbourne soon.

We are very grateful to Ruth Cross of the Rotary club of Tarawa (Kiribati) who will organise the receipt and distribution of these machines.

So while we still can’t visit any of our projects, it is rewarding to be able to get some shipments away to them.

Tony Castley

Pallet for 29 new sewing machines being shipped to Kiribati