Hi folks, if anyone says to you “why should I go to the trouble of putting my children’s cast off clothes into a strong plastic bag, seal it, take it down to the post office and pay £5 a kilo to send it to South Africa, when all I need to do is chuck it into the recycle box for the council to take away?”  then please ask them to visit our website and read this extract from a report we received from Jenny who runs the Building Blocks orphanage in Cape Town and it tells us in a nutshell the work that RAGBAG is really supporting:

 
“We have No5 now – a little girl with HIV – 18 months, weighs only 6kgs.  She was found living in a shack that according to her social workers “never seen such filth in all his years of doing this work”   She arrived filthy and starving, sores all over her lower body – so sad – but we will get her right. She was left for two days over a weekend on the bed in the shack – alone – with half a loaf of bread next to her for food! The mother is expecting her 5th baby in one month’s time. ”
 
Food for thought – huh?  

25th April 2009 - Sandra reports:
I’ve just had three very large boxes from St Michael and the Angels primary school in Twerton,near Bath, all recycled school uniforms in wonderful condition as they have changed their uniform!  There are piles of clean and very good condition football gear which I know Julian and Kirsty will be delighted with as the children in the Aids/Hiv orphanages just luuv football strip.  So I will be sending off lots of little 1.5kilo packages to Julian in the next few weeks!
 
Don’t forget if anyone has any old items like this Julian and Kirsty will be delighted to received them.
 
The next bulletin for Ragbag will be coming soon and will have lots of wonderful pictures of the children at Building blocks – they have 14 little ones now now!  Kim has just got back from a visit to the home and will be giving you an update along with the photos.
 
Don’t forget if you have a tenner to spare just send it along to the address I gave you on the last bulletin and which is now on the website.
 
Good luck with your small packages!
Very best wishes

9th June
 If pregnant Mothers in South Africa who have HIV/Aids are given retroviral drugs during pregnancy then the baby will be born with no infection.  The SA government has committed to this course of action but due to various problems these Mums are mostly not receiving treatment.  If a child is born with the infection their life expectancy might only be 14 years.
 
The Aids Law Project, an NGO based in Johannesburg, estimated that 50,000 children in South Africa were in need of antiretroviral drugs at the beginning of 2006, but that only around 10,000 were receiving them.  UNAIDS estimates that at the end of 2005, children accounted for 8% of those receiving antiretroviral drugs in South Africa. (Ref:  www.avert.org/aidssouthafrica.htm)

June 2nd
Deep and difficult to find (!) Research on Government websites this weekend tells us that it costs roughly £37 to process recycling 1kilo of clothes and that acrylics cause them great problems.  They have to collect, sort, separate, shred and then pulp with water what they can.  You might like to tell your network that it only costs just over £4 to send that same kilo of, say, babygrows or blankets to the children who need them in South Africa.

Thank you all so much for your support and welcome to our new friends in the USA and France!
Best wishes