Update on the Quilt Collective

While I haven't posted anything here, a lot has been happening behind the scenes.  I asked donors not to send any more quilts last year, as I had so many, and nowhere to store them.  We finally delivered them to Yaso about six weeks ago, and she is organising for them to be shipped to PNG.  This is not an easy operation for many reasons, that I won't go into here, but I can assure the readers of this blog that the PNG project is getting bigger all the time.  Our quilts are just a small part of a global project, of which PNG is one country of several to be involved.  Yaso and the PNG Elders want to take the quilt collective down a different path, i.e. instead of continuing to distribute quilts ad hoc, they are thinking of selling them for a very small amount (these people are self supporting) to their people, and using the money raised to build Childrens Centres in the villages. 

I attended a meeting today of the Probus Club of Warrandyte, where Yaso and I were the guest speakers.  My presentation was only about 10 minutes, during which time I spoke about my work in making quilts for various causes, and how I came to start the Quilt Collective with Yaso.  Yaso spoke for over an hour on her work in PNG, showing a short film about the natives and what they are achieving in the face of mining companies destruction of their land.  The audience was very interested, and Yaso was pleased with their positive response, as a number of people came up to her later and offered support in various ways.

I will ask Yaso to write something for this blog so the readers can understand more of what is happening.  Once the current batch of quilts are in PNG and have been distributed, I will post a notice here to let our donors know that they can continue to make baby quilts for us!