Wool for Ukraine

As we enter the summer period our thoughts turn to Winter! A number of activities now need the support of our Glbal Giving Community.

Firstly our fund raising has been able to provide workshop and therapy sessions and to several wool groups close to oiur Foundation headquarters. These are scheduled to continue in the summer period but after the summer we need to find money for these to continue!

Secondly wool supplies continue to arrive for us to send on to groups in Poland and into Ukraine. However this again costs money in post and courier costs. We currently support 5 groups in Ukraine with materials. These groups of wonderfully talented ladies do a range of activities, including felting knitting and weaving. A number of them are focused on providing warm winter clothing for the approaching cold weather. Yes, I know it sounds strange talking of Winter, in Summer, but we need to prepare and make!

In Zywiec more than 20 Ukrainian ladies are now also in proper skills training workshops that will enable them to develop a career in wool crafting this programme also needs your support. We hope to showcase their work in a textile fair again in Germany this September, where we are also pledged wool supplies from German crafters, but we go if we can raise the travel costs involved.

In short, the good work goes on not only in Poland, the USA ( Port Townsend and the Bay Area particularly)  but  also in Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia and Iceland and of course our bravest of brave in Ukraine itself. 

Wool for Ukraine was always designed to be a concept, a movement, a way of uniting people to help and support our dearest Ukrainians though therapy, through support and to promote togetherness.

It’s a beautiful movement and there is no better example of this anniversary to show you the Wool for Ukraine Team from  Cupertino, in the Bay area of California. "Wool for Ukraine: The Bay Area"

This is a group that gathered woolly friends and refugees who cam to California and since the war they have been knitting together and sending items to Ukraine. They like our Zywiec group have established a permanent wool workshop to meet and work at any time.

Impressively they now as a group number 33 people. This is a large and wonderful support group that source wool donations, wool craft  and whose output they send through to Ukraine. The support group goes even further gathering essential supplies on a need basis. They are currently collecting sleeping bags.

The model of this Wool for Ukraine group is beautiful and now has established contacts to send supplies and finished goods to Poland and Ukraine as needed.   All our groups operate because  of the generous support and donations and we still need support for the immediate future of the program.

Our Love and admiration of your efforts is enormous!

Woolly Hugs.

ZDF Wool for Ukraine Team.

Wool for Ukraine over the 9 months since it was initiated by the Zywiec Development  Foundation has grown considerably in its reach and scope of activities. Apart from the gratefully received monetary support through GlobalGiving we have also received an approximate  30,000 USD of wool and wool craft tools have been donated to the programme from all over the World. To emphasise this is a globally supported programme that we have received ongoing  monetary and wool donations in December from Australia, From the Western Seaboard of the USA, from Iceland and the Faeroe Islands among many other places.

The Wool for Ukraine programme now supports  three main activities are:

1) the distribution of craft bags to refugees

2) the organisation of refugee groups into craft groups with whom we can work with in skills development, but most importantly on social integration and providing psychological assistance and

3) Support to profession and/or highly wool crafters who maintain and make an income from producing high quality products which we can showcase at trade fairs.

With  your donor  support  we will deliver workshops on a weekly basis through to end of April 2023 but we still need other  funding.   Our programme has expanded across Europe with workshops planned with a  Ukrainian Master Crafter now located in Hamburg in cooperation  a German felt artist from the region. To promote the programme we also will attend   a big sheep event in an open air museum in the Stuttgart Region. This will be a large event for kids/visitors and we hope that we can collect donations and sell products from the Wool for Ukraine program.  

We are also in the process of organising a refugee craft group in conjunction with German crafters in Ausburg in Germany in the Spring of 2023 and in February we have an event planned combining wool crafts and solidarity with Ukrainian refugees currently living in Wallonia, Lorraine and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.  

Our funds are still limited and these  event need to receive some programme support to cover costs of putting them on.

Finally we have a group of professional wool crafters out of Ukraine and also displaced within Ukraine which is growing in number. We currently have an estimated 50 individuals supported by wool supplies and also given market support to exchange their wonderful products for more donations.  An ongoing plan is to provide additional support to Ukrainian Internally Displaced Persons. We have to date managed to get wool supplies through to individual crafters, however an ambition in 2023 is to improve this and find or establish crafter groups. These will be of different character dependant on the motivation of the participants. In some case we expect the groups to produce warm clothing which is extremely necessary for all parties caught up in the conflict. A wool sock campaign and a Warmth for Ukraine initiative is already running and we will look to see if we can link and contribute to these other worthy programmes. We will also look to the hubs of Traditional Wool Crafting within Ukraine now badly affected by loosing materials supplies and also markets for their goods. It is seen as important that this element of the heritage and history of Ukraine is maintained and even developed at this time.  Information about this is starting to be posted in our Facebook and other social media sites with momentum expected in the first months of 2023.

 Zywiec December 29^th 2022.