In those 10 short weeks we have fundraised £15,611.95 for Ashford, Dover & Folkestone Scrubbers (WHH), which was used to buy 9881m (almost 10KM!) of fabric. This fabric has been cut, packaged and then distributed by our incredible volunteer drivers who have done 1,254 deliveries & collections in this time. The wonderful sewists in the group have made 2,231 sets of scrubs, over 2000 scrub hats, 3000+ wash bags (lost count!), and 450 PPE surgical gowns. We have fulfilled 95 orders across South East Kent from as far out as Tenterden, Lydd and Sandwich. We also have also resized 280 sets of scrubs and are in the process of creating 1,500 urgent scrubs hats for the William Harvey Hospital. We have currently fulfilled all of our NHS orders and with the surplus scrubs are working through the list of care homes that have contacted us to supply those too.
All of this hard work equates to a staggering 19,367 volunteer hours. If all these volunteers were paid the national living wage for their time it would have cost an astounding £168,880!!!! We cannot even begin to express how proud we are of each and every volunteer for being part of this huge achievement. Never in a million years did we think we would create over 10,000 items of PPE in such a short time frame. Many of the volunteers have put themselves out of their comfort zones by learning new skills to help with this staggering achievement during an unprecedented time of increased anxiety, stress and uncertainty. Everyone should take the time to step back and give themselves a huge pat on the back!
With our funding now depleted and our orders all fulfilled, we have made the difficult decision to begin to wind the group down. We have taken our last delivery of fabric from our wholesaler today, and once this has been distributed, we will not be purchasing any more. We still have enough fabric for 368 sets of scrubs, and over the coming weeks we will be chasing up any fabric that has been with volunteers for longer than 3 weeks. With that in mind, if you do have donated fabric you are no longer in the position to sew with (for whatever the reason) please either pm us for an address to drop off to, or complete the collection form. This will save us a huge amount of admin in the long run and will help us ensure that all of the fabric is used as it was intended for. If you are still able to sew scrubs for us, please do complete the fabric request form as we do still have fabric available for you to use. With this in mind and as lockdown measures are reduced, with volunteers beginning to return back to work from furlough and shielding we will be aiming to have all off this fabric completed and the finished items with their final destinations by the 1st July. We would like to take this time to thank everyone from sewists, drivers, ‘Bikers’ and long suffering husbands, to those who have donated or fundraised, and those who have given up space in their houses to help us store items or helped sort the deliveries. Without every single cog in this machine we would not have been able to achieve the incredible things that we have over the last 10 weeks.
A MASSIVE WELL DONE EVERYONE!
- A beautiful update from Megan, Coordinator of Ashford, Folkesotone and Dover Scrubbers
With this in mind and as lockdown measures are reduced, with volunteers beginning to return back to work from furlough and shielding we will be aiming to have all off this fabric completed and the finished items with their final destinations by the 1st July.
We would like to take this time to thank everyone from sewists, drivers, ‘Bikers’ and long suffering husbands, to those who have donated or fundraised, and those who have given up space in their houses to help us store items or helped sort the deliveries. Without every single cog in this machine we would not have been able to achieve the incredible things that we have over the last 10 weeks.
A MASSIVE WELL DONE EVERYONE!
- A beautiful update from Megan, Coordinator of Ashford, Folkesotone and Dover Scrubbers