Sewaid activity up-date August 2024

Dear Sewaid Friends,

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.

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 !

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.

 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

Pallets of our fabric at the Rotary warehouse